Genesis 15:5

Summary

The verse narrates a scene in which the subject (identified in the surrounding context, though referred to here only by verb inflection "he") brings Abram outside and issues two commands: to look at the sky and to count the stars. A repeated introductory formula, "and he said," frames a second statement declaring that Abram's offspring will match the countless stars in number.

Key words

• yotze ("he brought out", H3318H) — hiphil causative form: someone causes Abram to go outside, rather than Abram going out on his own.
• habet ("look", H5027) — hiphil imperative, a direct command form, reinforced by the particle na ("please", H4994) which softens or emphasizes the request.
• sefor ("count", H5608A) — qal imperative, paired with habet as the second command in the sequence.
• tukhal ("you are able", H3201) — qal imperfect, expressing capacity/possibility within the conditional clause introduced by im ("if", H0518A).
• zar'akha ("your offspring", H2233H + H9021) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, syntactically bound to "your," producing "offspring of you."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of vayyiqtol (narrative) verbs — vayyotze ("and he brought out"), vayyomer ("and he said," appearing twice) — which advance the narrative in sequence: first the action of bringing Abram outside, then a first speech act containing the two imperatives, then a second speech act containing the concluding statement. The subject of these verbs is not named within this verse itself; it is carried only by the third-person masculine singular verb inflection, so the referent must be supplied from the surrounding narrative.

The two imperatives, habet ("look") and sefor ("count"), are grammatically parallel commands, both directed "toward" a destination marked by the directional he suffix attached to "the outside," "the heavens." The conditional clause im tukhal lispor otam ("if you are able to count them") uses the infinitive lispor ("to count") dependent on the finite verb tukhal ("you are able"), expressing a hypothetical extension of the counting command rather than a separate instruction. The final clause, introduced by the adverb koh ("thus", H3541), uses the construct form zar'akha ("your offspring") with the imperfect yihyeh ("it will be") to state a comparison between the stars just mentioned and the noun "offspring," without repeating the noun "stars" explicitly in this closing line.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text contains two occurrences of vayyomer ("and he said") — one introducing the imperatives, one introducing the closing statement "thus shall your offspring be." The Vulgate mirrors this with two verbs, ait illi and dixit ei. The LXX, however, renders only one explicit speech-verb (εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτὸν) for the whole passage, joining "so shall your seed be" directly with καὶ οὕτως without repeating a verb of speaking, effectively merging what the Hebrew presents as two separate speech acts into one continuous utterance. Additionally, the BSB and SBLIBRE translations supply "the LORD" as an explicit subject for the opening verb, a proper name not present in the Hebrew of this verse, where the subject is carried solely by verb morphology.