Genesis 15:2

Summary

Abram addresses God using two divine titles and asks what benefit a divine gift could have, since he has no offspring. He then identifies the person who stands to inherit his household — a figure connected to "Damascus" and named Eliezer — through a Hebrew phrase whose exact grammatical sense is debated.

Key words

• mah ("what?", H4100) — interrogative pronoun opening a rhetorical question that frames the whole verse as a complaint or challenge.
• titten ("you will give", H5414G) — qal imperfect, denoting a future or ongoing action: "what will you give / what can you keep giving."
• 'ariri ("childless", H6185) — masculine singular adjective describing Abram's state, paired with the participle holekh ("going", H1980L) to suggest continuous progression toward that condition.
• ven-mesheq ("son of the acquisition of", H1121J + H4943) — two nouns in construct chain, a rare combination whose second term (mesheq) has no other clear biblical attestation, making its precise meaning uncertain.
• hu ("he", H1931) — personal pronoun functioning as a copula, linking the preceding construct phrase to the following name(s), "Damascus" and "Eliezer."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), followed by Abram's address to God using both 'Adonai ("O Lord," H0136) and the divine name YHWH (H3069) together — a double title. The core question, mah-titten-li ("what will you give me?"), uses the imperfect form of titten, which leaves open whether the giving is a single future event or a repeated/ongoing one. Abram supports his question with a circumstantial clause: ve-'anokhi holekh 'ariri, "and I am going childless" — the participle holekh suggests a continuing state rather than a completed condition.

The final clause, u-ven-mesheq beiti hu Dammeseq 'Eli'ezer, is grammatically dense. The construct chain ven-mesheq beiti ("son of the mesheq of my house") is followed by the pronoun hu and then two more nouns, Dammeseq and 'Eli'ezer, without a preposition connecting them explicitly. The Hebrew syntax does not clarify whether "Damascus" modifies "Eliezer" (as a place of origin) or functions as a separate identifying term.

Differences between versions

The LXX treats mesheq not as a common noun but transliterates it as a name, Μάσεκ, and adds the word οἰκογενοῦς ("home-born slave"), a nuance not stated by the bare Hebrous construct chain. The Vulgate instead translates mesheq interpretively as procuratoris ("of the steward"), supplying a role not explicit in the Hebrew nouns. Modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE) render the closing words as "Eliezer of Damascus," which reorders the Hebrew sequence Dammeseq 'Eli'ezer into a name plus place-of-origin format not directly mirrored in the Masoretic word order.