Genesis 16:4
וַיָּבֹא אֶל־הָגָר וַתַּהַר וַתֵּרֶא כִּי הָרָתָה וַתֵּקַל גְּבִרְתָּהּ בְּעֵינֶֽיהָ׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
Tap a word to see its entry
✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיָּבֹ֥א אֶל־הָגָ֖ר וַתַּ֑הַר וַתֵּ֙רֶא֙ כִּ֣י הָרָ֔תָה וַתֵּקַ֥ל גְּבִרְתָּ֖הּ בְּעֵינֶֽיהָ׃
καὶ εἰσῆλθεν πρὸς Ἁγάρ, καὶ συνέλαβεν· καὶ ἴδεν ὅτι ἐν γαστρὶ ὦι, καὶ ἡ κυρία ἐναντίον αὐτῆς.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Qui ingressus est ad eam. At illa concepisse se videns, despexit dominam suam.
Abram tuvo relaciones con Agar, y ella quedó embarazada. Al darse cuenta de que estaba embarazada, Agar comenzó a mirar a su señora con desprecio.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y él cohabitó con Agar, la cual concibió: y cuando vió que había concebido, miraba con desprecio á su señora.
And he slept with Hagar, and she conceived. But when Hagar realized that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Genesis 16:4 narrates four consecutive actions: a man goes to Hagar, she conceives, she perceives that she has conceived, and her mistress becomes insignificant in her eyes. The verse describes both physical events and Hagar's changed perception of her mistress's status.
Key words
- tahar ("she conceived", H2029) — qal narrative form; conception is marked as a discrete event in the story's chain of "and then" actions.
- tere ("she saw", H7200G) — qal narrative; introduces Hagar's cognitive perception, not physical sight alone, since it governs the clause with ki ("that", H3588A).
- teqal ("she became insignificant", H7043) — qal narrative, from a root meaning "to be light/slight"; the grammatical subject of this verb is gevirtah ("her mistress"), not Hagar.
- gevirtah ("mistress", H1404) — feminine singular construct with pronominal suffix -ah ("her", H9024), meaning "her mistress"; functions as the subject of teqal.
- eineiha ("her eyes", H5869H) — feminine dual construct with suffix -ha ("her", H9024); forms the idiomatic phrase "in her eyes," marking a perceived status rather than a physical description.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence structure places the mistress (gevirtah, H1404) as the grammatical subject of the verb teqal ("she became insignificant", H7043). Literally, the clause reads "and her mistress became light/insignificant in her eyes" — the mistress is the one who undergoes a change in perceived status, and that change occurs specifically within Hagar's perception, marked by the phrase be'eineiha ("in her eyes", H5869H + H9024). This is a stative construction: the verb qalal (root of H7043) describes weight or significance, not an active verb of despising.
The chain of narrative verbs (va- + verb forms in positions 1, 5, 7, 11) creates a rapid sequence: entry, conception, seeing, and the shift in Hagar's regard for her mistress — four consecutive narrative actions with no interruption in the Hebrew syntax.
Differences between versions
The Hebrew makes gevirtah ("her mistress") the grammatical subject of the stative verb "became light" — the text describes a change in the mistress's perceived standing from Hagar's viewpoint. The Vulgate renders this with an active verb where Hagar is the subject: "despexit dominam suam" ("she despised her mistress"), shifting the grammatical agency from the mistress's status to Hagar's action. The LXX excerpt given reads "ἡ κυρία ἐναντίον αὐτῆς" ("the mistress [was] before/opposite her"), which lacks an explicit verb corresponding to "became insignificant" and presents the relationship spatially or adversatively rather than through a verb of diminished esteem.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.