Genesis 14:21

Summary

The king of Sodom addresses Abram after the battle, asking him to return the captured people while allowing Abram to keep the material possessions recovered. The verse consists of two parallel imperative commands framing a proposed division of the recovered spoils.

Key words

• nefesh ("person[s]", H5315) — feminine singular noun with the definite article, referring collectively to the human captives; literally "the soul/being," used here in the sense of living persons.
• rekhush ("possession[s]", H7399) — masculine singular noun with the definite article, denoting movable property or goods, standing in contrast to nefesh.
• ten ("give", H5414) — qal imperative, second person masculine singular, the king's direct command form addressed to Abram.
• qach ("take", H3947) — qal imperative, second person masculine singular, parallel in form to ten, creating a balanced two-part instruction.
• melekh ("king of", H4428) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking directly to Sedom ("Sodom") to form the title "king of Sodom."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as direct speech introduced by the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said"), typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative sequencing. The king's speech itself contains two short imperative clauses arranged in chiastic-like symmetry: ten-li ha-nefesh ("give to-me the person[s]") and ve-ha-rekhush qach-lakh ("and the possession[s] take for-yourself"). Each imperative is paired with a prepositional phrase carrying a pronominal suffix — li ("to me") and lakh ("for yourself") — which sharpens the contrast between what goes to the king and what remains with Abram.

The definite article on both ha-nefesh and ha-rekhush indicates that these are the specific persons and goods just mentioned in the surrounding narrative (the captives and spoils from the earlier conflict), not people or property in general. The word order also places the object before the verb in the second clause (ve-ha-rekhush qach-lakh), which is not required for grammatical function but creates a stylistic balance matching the first clause structurally.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew nefesh ("person[s]," H5315) is rendered in the LXX as τοὺς ἄνδρας ("the men"), narrowing the more general term "persons/souls" to specifically male individuals. The Vulgate uses animas ("souls"), staying closer to the literal sense of nefesh. For rekhush ("possessions," H7399), the LXX offers τὴν... ἵππον ("the horse/cavalry"), a specific rendering not present in the Hebrew, which uses the general term for property or goods; the Vulgate instead has cetera ("the rest"), a broader paraphrase rather than a specific noun.