Genesis 14:23

Summary

Abram speaks an oath to the king of Sodom, declaring that he will take nothing belonging to him — not even something as small as a thread or a sandal strap — so that the king can never claim to have made Abram wealthy. The verse closes the episode following the rescue of captives and goods after the battle with the four kings.

Key words

• 'im ("if", H0518H) — appears twice, introducing a double conditional clause; in Biblical Hebrew this doubled "if...and if" structure functions as an oath formula, where the condition itself implies a self-imposed curse if broken, rather than a simple hypothetical.
• chut ("a thread", H2339) — masculine singular noun, paired with serokh na'al ("thong of a sandal") to form a merism (two extremes representing "anything at all, however small").
• 'eqqach ("I will take", H3947G) — qal imperfect, first person, expressing Abram's future intention within the oath's second conditional clause.
• he'esharti ("I made rich", H6238) — hiphil perfect, first person; the causative stem marks the action as "causing to become rich," and the perfect aspect frames it as a completed state the king might later claim.
• lo ("not", H3808) with tomar ("you will say", H0559) — negated qal imperfect, second person masculine, forming the purpose clause: "so that you will not say."

What the text says

The verse opens with two parallel 'im ("if") clauses (words 1 and 9), a construction in Biblical Hebrew used for oaths: the speaker states a condition whose violation would invoke consequence, but the consequence itself is left unstated — a common oath pattern where the apodosis is suppressed. The first clause uses the merism mi-chut ve-'ad serokh na'al ("from a thread and unto a sandal-thong") to express totality through minimal example: even the smallest imaginable item is included in the refusal. The second clause restates the same oath in general terms — 'eqqach mikkol 'asher lakh ("I will take from all that is yours") — reinforcing the first with a broader formulation.

The final clause is a negative purpose clause introduced by ve-lo ("and not") plus the imperfect tomar ("you will say"), followed by a quoted first-person statement, 'ani he'esharti 'et-Avram ("I, I made Abram rich"). The independent pronoun 'ani ("I") before the finite verb he'esharti adds emphasis, foregrounding the subject of the potential claim the king might make. The hiphil perfect he'esharti marks the causative sense "caused to become rich," with the perfect aspect presenting the enrichment as a completed, claimable fact — precisely what Abram's oath is designed to prevent.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew preserves the doubled 'im oath construction (word 1 and word 9), a formal feature without an independent apodosis. Both the LXX (ei... lēmpsomai, "if... I will take") and the Vulgate (quod... non accipiam, "that... I will not take") resolve this into a single direct negative statement, dropping the second 'im clause's repetition and rendering the oath's implied refusal explicitly. The Vulgate additionally supplies non ("not") directly, where the Hebrew's negation is absent from the oath clauses themselves and appears only in the final purpose clause (ve-lo tomar).