Genesis 15:11

Summary

The verse narrates two sequential events: birds of prey descended upon the animal carcasses that Abram had prepared, and Abram drove them away. The Hebrew uses two consecutive narrative verbs to present this as a continuous action within the larger covenant scene.

Key words

• va-iYered ("and it came down", H3381) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the first sequential event in the story ("and then it came down").
• ha-'Ayit ("the bird[s] of prey", H5861) — singular noun with definite article; though singular in form, it refers to birds of prey collectively, matching the plural verbs in translations.
• ha-pegaRim ("the carcasses", H6297) — plural noun with definite article, referring back to the animal pieces split earlier in the chapter's covenant ritual.
• va-yaShev ("and he drove away", H5380) — hiphil (causative) verb with narrative vav, indicating Abram caused the birds to leave; the causative stem intensifies the action beyond simple departure.
• 'oTam ("them", H0853 + H9038) — direct object marker with pronominal suffix, grammatically linking back to ha-'Ayit as the object being driven away.

What the text says

The verse is built on two clauses joined by the narrative vav construction (va-...), a standard Hebrew storytelling device that presents events in temporal sequence: first the bird's descent, then Abram's action. The subject of the first clause, ha-'Ayit ("the bird of prey", H5861), is grammatically singular despite referring to a collective group of scavenging birds — a common feature of Hebrew where singular nouns can denote a class or type rather than one individual.

The second clause shifts the grammatical subject to Abram (H0087), placed at the very end of the sentence in Hebrew word order, which is typical for narrative clauses where the verb precedes the subject. The verb va-yaShev (H5380) is in the hiphil stem, a causative verbal pattern that indicates Abram did not merely chase the birds passively but actively caused them to turn back or retreat. The direct object marker 'oTam (H0853 + H9038) explicitly ties the action back to "them" — the birds — using a pronominal suffix rather than repeating the noun.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXX) renders the Hebrew singular ha-'Ayit as the plural ὄρνεα ("birds"), and adds τὰ διχοτομήματα αὐτῶν ("their divided pieces"), a phrase not present in the Hebrew text, which specifies further what the carcasses were. The Vulgate uses volucres ("birds," plural) for ha-'Ayit, aligning with the LXX's pluralization rather than the Hebrew's singular collective form. Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) consistently render the noun as plural ("birds of prey," "aves"), following the LXX and Vulgate pattern rather than a strict rendering of the Hebrew singular.