Genesis 16:10

Summary

The messenger (mal'akh) of Yehovah speaks to Hagar, promising that her offspring (zar'ekh) will be increased to an extent that it cannot be counted. The verse uses an intensified verbal construction to emphasize the certainty and magnitude of this multiplication.

Key words

• mal'akh ("angel/messenger of", H4397) — masculine singular construct noun, joined to the divine name to identify the speaker as "messenger of Yehovah."
• harbah ("certainly ", H7235) — hiphil infinitive absolute, a grammatical device that precedes the finite verb to intensify its meaning ("surely, greatly").
• 'arbeh ("I will increase", H7235) — hiphil imperfect, first person, same root as harbah; the causative stem indicates the subject causes the increase, and the imperfect marks incomplete/future action.
• zar'ekh ("your offspring", H2233) — masculine singular construct noun with second-person feminine singular suffix, addressed directly to Hagar ("your seed").
• yissafer ("it will be counted", H5608) — niphal imperfect, passive voice: the offspring is the one "counted," not the counter, and the imperfect again signals future/ongoing aspect.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative vav-consecutive construction va-yomer ("and he said"), a standard formula introducing direct speech in Biblical Hebrew narrative. The subject is mal'akh Yehovah ("messenger of Yehovah"), functioning as a construct chain where mal'akh ("messenger of") is grammatically bound to the divine name.

The central grammatical feature is the pairing harbah 'arbeh — an infinitive absolute followed by a finite verb of the same root (H7235), both derived from a root meaning "to increase/multiply." This construction, sometimes called a "verbal hendiadys" or emphatic infinitive, is a Hebrew idiom that intensifies the verb's action; it does not add a second distinct meaning but reinforces certainty and scale, roughly "I will surely multiply" or "greatly multiply." The infinitive absolute itself is uninflected, while the following imperfect 'arbeh carries the person (first person, the speaker/messenger) and tense/aspect information.

The object of this increase is zar'ekh ("your offspring"), a construct noun with a second-person feminine singular suffix, directly addressing Hagar. The final clause employs the niphal (passive) verb yissafer ("it will be counted") — grammatically, the offspring is not performing the counting but is the one who cannot be numbered. The prepositional phrase me-rov ("from multitude", H7230) specifies the cause: the offspring will not be countable "because of multitude."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew infinitive-absolute-plus-imperfect construction (harbah 'arbeh) with a participle plus future verb, plēthynōn plēthynō ("multiplying I will multiply"), preserving the emphatic repetition through a different grammatical pairing (participle + finite verb rather than infinitive absolute + finite verb). The Vulgate similarly uses Multiplicans... multiplicabo ("multiplying... I will multiply"), also a participle-plus-future construction, matching the LXX's strategy for rendering the Hebrew emphatic doubling rather than reproducing the Hebrew's infinitive absolute form.