Genesis 15:8

Summary

Abram responds to the divine promise with a question, asking on what grounds he will know that he will actually take possession of the land. The verse combines a divine title, an interrogative construction, and a verb of possession to express doubt seeking confirmation.

Key words

• va-yomar ("and he said", H0559) — qal imperfect with narrative vav, marking this as the next event in the narrated sequence.
• Adonai ("O Lord", H0136) — a title of address, here paired with the divine name.
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3069) — the divine proper name, written here in the form pointed with vowels of Elohim in some manuscript traditions, addressed directly by Abram.
• bammah ("how / in what", H4100 + H9003) — interrogative pronoun mah ("what?") fused with the preposition be- ("in"), producing a question of means: "by what (means)?"
• edaʿ ("I will know", H3045) — qal imperfect, first person, expressing future or ongoing knowledge — the thing Abram seeks.
• irashenah ("I will possess it", H3423H + H9034) — qal imperfect first person with a feminine pronominal suffix "her/it," referring back to the land (a feminine noun in Hebrew), expressing future possession.

What the text says

The verse opens with va-yomar ("and he said", H0559), the standard narrative verb that continues the story after the preceding divine speech. Abram's response begins with the double address Adonai YHWH ("O Lord... Yehovah", H0136 + H3069), combining a title with the divine name — a form of address distinct from most other uses of the divine name alone in the surrounding narrative.

The core of Abram's question is built from bammah ("how", H4100 + H9003), a compound of the preposition "in/by" and the interrogative "what," asking about the means or grounds of knowledge, not simply "what." This is followed by edaʿ ("I will know", H3045), a first-person qal imperfect verb. The clause ki irashenah ("that I will possess it", H3588A + H3423H) uses the conjunction ki ("that/if", H3588A), which can function either as a subordinating "that" introducing the content of the knowledge, or with a conditional nuance ("if"). The final verb irashenah carries the feminine suffix -nah ("her/it", H9034), pointing back to the land as its grammatical antecedent, since "land" (erets) is grammatically feminine in Hebrew. The sentence structure places the question of method of knowing (bammah... edaʿ) before the content to be known (ki irashenah), a construction that Hebrew allows but which requires reordering in translation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Adonai YHWH as "Δέσποτα Κύριε" ("Master, Lord"), using two title-words rather than a title plus proper name. The Vulgate similarly gives "Domine Deus" ("Lord God"), treating the second term as a divine title ("God") rather than transliterating the name YHWH, consistent with the Hebrew ki being taken by both LXX and Vulgate as "that" (ὅτι / quod) rather than a conditional "if."