Genesis 16:7

Summary

The verse reports that "the angel of Yehovah" (mal'akh Yehovah, H4397H/H3068G) found Hagar at a spring of water in the wilderness, identifying that spring's location precisely as the one on the way to Shur. The sentence is built as a narrative report followed by a geographic clarification of which spring is meant.

Key words

• va-yyimtza'ah ("and he found her", H4672) — qal verb with narrative vav and third-person suffix -ah ("her", H9034), marking the main sequential action of the story: the finding of Hagar.
• mal'akh ("angel of / messenger of", H4397H) — masculine singular construct noun, grammatically bound to Yehovah, so the phrase functions as a single title, "messenger/angel of Yehovah," rather than two separate nouns.
• 'ein ("spring of", H5869M) — feminine singular construct, first occurrence, bound to ha-mayim ("the water," H4325G), producing "spring of the water."
• ha-'ayin ("the spring", H5869M) — the same noun repeated but in absolute form with the article instead of construct, used to specify which spring was just mentioned.
• derekh ("way of", H1870K) — common gender singular construct, linking the spring's location to the proper place name Shur (H7793).

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative vav on yimtza'ah (H9001+H4672), the standard verb form Biblical Hebrew uses to advance a story's sequence of events ("and then he found her"). The subject, mal'akh Yehovah (H4397H, H3068G), is a construct phrase: the noun "messenger/angel of" is grammatically bound to the divine name, so the two words together name a single figure rather than being read as "a messenger" plus "Yehovah" as separate items.

The location is given twice, each time with the preposition 'al ("at", H5921A). First: 'al-'ein ha-mayim ba-midbar, "at the spring of the water in the wilderness" — here 'ein (H5869M) is in construct form, grammatically dependent on ha-mayim (H4325G), yielding "spring of the water." Second: 'al-ha-'ayin be-derekh Shur, "at the spring on the way to Shur" — here the same noun 'ayin appears in its absolute form with the definite article (ha-'ayin, H9009+H5869M) rather than in construct. This shift from construct to absolute form, combined with the article, signals that the text is now referring back to the same spring already mentioned, further specifying its position along the derekh ("way of", H1870K) to Shur, a place name (H7793).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mal'akh Yehovah as "ἄγγελος κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ" ("angel of the Lord God"), adding "God" (θεοῦ) where the Hebrew text has only Yehovah (H3068G) without an accompanying word for "God." The Vulgate's juxta fontem... qui est in via Sur in deserto restructures the two Hebrew prepositional phrases with 'al into a single relative clause ("near the spring... which is on the way to Shur in the wilderness"), whereas the Hebrew presents the wilderness location and the "way to Shur" location as two parallel 'al-phrases rather than one clause modifying the other.