Genesis 13:3

Summary

The verse describes Abram's journey from the Negev toward Beth-El, moving in stages until reaching the specific place where his tent had previously stood, located between Beth-El and Ai. The Hebrew marks this as a return to a former location, emphasized by a temporal relative clause.

Key words

• va.iYelekh ("he went", H1980G) — narrative qal verb with vav-consecutive, establishing the main narrative action: "and he went."
• masa'av ("his journeyings", H4550) — masculine plural construct noun with pronominal suffix, meaning "his stages of travel"; the plural form indicates the journey happened in successive legs rather than a single movement.
• ha-Makom ("the place", H4725) — definite singular noun, marking a specific, identifiable location rather than a general area.
• hayah ("it had been", H1961) — qal perfect verb, a completed action prior to the main narrative time, functioning here to indicate that the tent's presence at that location was earlier than the current journey.
• 'ohel-o ("his tent", H0168G construct + H9023 suffix) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, specifying possession: the tent belonging to Abram.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence chains several prepositional phrases marking the geography of Abram's movement: min-Negev ("from the Negev"), 'ad-Beit-El ("to Beth-El"), and 'ad ha-Makom ("to the place"). The verb va.iYelekh with the plural construct masa'av ("his journeyings") suggests travel by stages rather than a single trip, though the text does not specify how many stages or their duration.

The relative clause beginning with 'asher ("where") introduces a subordinate description of "the place" (ha-Makom): it is defined by the qal perfect verb hayah ("it had been"), which marks an action completed before the main narrative moment — the tent's earlier presence at that site. The adverb sham ("there") reinforces the locative reference back to ha-Makom. The phrase ba-techilah ("at the beginning") further specifies that this earlier tent-pitching occurred at an earlier point in Abram's history, without the text stating exactly when.

The final geographic clause, bein Beit-El u-bein ha-'Ai ("between Beth-El and between Ai"), uses the construct form bein twice to bracket the location between the two named places.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders masa'av ("his journeyings", H4550) as ὄθεν ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν ἔρημον ("from where he came into the wilderness"), introducing "wilderness" (ἔρημον) as a gloss on the starting point, which is not present in the Hebrew text. The Hebrew instead names the Negev (Negev, H5045G) as the starting region, without the term "wilderness." The Vulgate's reversusque est ("and he returned") supplies an interpretive verb of return not explicitly present in the Hebrew va.iYelekh ("he went"), which is a general verb of motion rather than one specifying return.