Genesis 16:8

Summary

The speaker asks Hagar, identified by her relationship to Sarai, where she has come from and where she is going. Hagar answers that she is fleeing from the presence of Sarai, whom she calls "my mistress."

Key words

• shifchat ("maidservant of", H8198) — feminine singular construct, linking Hagar directly to Sarai as her legal owner rather than naming Hagar independently.
• vat ("have you come", H0935G) — qal perfect, marking the coming-from as a completed action already finished at the moment of speaking.
• telekhi ("are you going", H1980G) — qal imperfect, marking the going-to as an action not yet completed, open toward the future.
• mipnei ("from before/from the face of", H6440L construct with H9006) — construct phrase built on "face," an idiomatic way of expressing departure from someone's presence rather than a literal reference to a face.
• borachat ("fleeing", H1272) — qal participle, feminine singular, describing Hagar's action as an ongoing state rather than a single completed event.

What the text says

The verse opens with va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), a narrative verb without an explicit subject noun in the Hebrew text itself; the identity of the speaker depends on information carried from the preceding verse. The address to Hagar uses her name plus the construct phrase shifchat Sarai ("maidservant of Sarai," H8198 + H8297), which frames her identity through her servitude rather than independently.

The two questions posed to her use different verbal aspects: ei-mizzeh vat ("from where have you come," H0335+H9006+H2088+H0935G) employs the perfect, treating her departure as a finished act, while anah telekhi ("where are you going," H0575+H1980G) employs the imperfect, treating her destination as unresolved or future. This grammatical contrast marks a distinction between a completed past action and an open, undetermined one, a nuance not always visible in translation.

Hagar's answer, mipnei Sarai gevirti anokhi borachat ("from before Sarai my mistress I am fleeing"), places the independent pronoun anokhi ("I," H0595) before the participle borachat ("fleeing," H1272). This construction, using a participle instead of a finite verb, presents her fleeing as a continuous or ongoing condition rather than a single completed act, and the fronted pronoun gives emphasis to the subject "I" within the clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX makes explicit what the Hebrew leaves implicit regarding the speaker, adding "ὁ ἄγγελος κυρίου" ("the angel of the Lord") as the subject of "said," a specification not present in the Hebrew wording of this verse, which simply reads va-yomer ("and he said"). The Vulgate's "dixit ad illam" similarly supplies no subject noun, aligning more closely with the Hebrew's unspecified form than the LXX does.