Genesis 15:9
וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו קְחָה לִי עֶגְלָה מְשֻׁלֶּשֶׁת וְעֵז מְשֻׁלֶּשֶׁת וְאַיִל מְשֻׁלָּשׁ וְתֹר וְגוֹזָֽל׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלָ֗יו קְחָ֥ה לִי֙ עֶגְלָ֣ה מְשֻׁלֶּ֔שֶׁת וְעֵ֥ז מְשֻׁלֶּ֖שֶׁת וְאַ֣יִל מְשֻׁלָּ֑שׁ וְתֹ֖ר וְגוֹזָֽל׃
εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ λάβε μοι δάμαλιν τριετίζουσαν καὶ αἶγα τριετίζουσαν καὶ κριὸν τριετίζοντα καὶ τρυγόνα καὶ περιστεράν.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Et respondens Dominus: Sume, inquit, mihi vaccam triennem, et capram trimam, et arietem annorum trium, turturem quoque et columbam.
Yehová le respondió: “Tráeme una ternera, una cabra y un carnero, todos de tres años, y también una tórtola y un pichón de paloma”.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y le dijo: Apártame una becerra de tres años, y una cabra de tres años, y un carnero de tres años, una tórtola también, y un palomino.
And the LORD said to him, “ Bring Me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a turtledove and a young pigeon.”
✦ What the text says
Summary
Genesis 15:9 records an unnamed speaker's command to Abram (understood from context to be YHWH) to bring five sacrificial animals: a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. The verse consists almost entirely of an imperative followed by a list of nouns modified by a repeated participial form indicating age.
Key words
- qecha ("bring", H3947J) — qal imperative with paragogic he (the extra letter in qechah), a form that in Biblical Hebrew often adds emphasis or solemnity to the command, rather than a plain unmarked imperative.
- meshuleshet ("three years old", H8027) — pual (passive-intensive) participle, feminine singular, from a root related to "three"; it agrees grammatically with eglah ("heifer") and ez ("goat"), both feminine nouns.
- meshullash ("three years old", H8027) — the same pual participle in masculine singular form, agreeing with ayil ("ram", H0352A), a masculine noun.
- tor ("turtle-dove", H8449) — common-gender noun with no accompanying age-participle, unlike the three preceding animals.
- gozal ("young pigeon", H1469) — masculine singular noun specifying immaturity of the bird, contrasting with tor which carries no such qualifier.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), a wayyiqtol form that continues the story sequence without naming its subject in this verse; the referent is carried over from the surrounding narrative. The imperative qechah ("bring") is directed at Abram, marked by the pronominal suffix on eley ("to him", H0413+H9033) already spoken in the previous clause.
The list that follows shows Hebrew's use of the same participial root (sh-l-sh, "three") applied three times, once for each larger animal, but agreeing in gender with each noun: meshuleshet (feminine) for eglah and ez, and meshullash (masculine) for ayil. This participle is passive/intensive in form, literally something like "made threefold" or "tripled," used idiomatically to mean "three years old." The two birds, tor and gozal, break this pattern: neither carries an age-participle, and gozal itself denotes youth or immaturity rather than a specific numeric age, distinguishing it from the three-year formula used for the mammals.
Differences between versions
The Hebrew and the LXX (Swete) do not explicitly name the speaker in this verse (va-yomer, "and he said" / eipen, "he said"), leaving the subject to be inferred from context. The Vulgate inserts an explicit subject, "Dominus" ("the Lord"), which is not present in the Hebrew clause itself. Several modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE) likewise supply "the LORD" or "Yehová" explicitly, making interpretive subjects explicit where the Hebrew and LXX leave them implicit.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.