Genesis 17:1

Summary

Genesis 17:1 records that when Abram reached ninety-nine years, Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) appeared to him and identified himself as 'El Shaddai ("God Almighty", H0410G/H7706), issuing two imperatives: to walk before him and to be blameless.

Key words

• ben ("a son of", H1121L) — construct noun used idiomatically with a number to express age ("a son of ninety years" = ninety years old), a standard Hebrew age formula.
• va-yera' ("and he appeared", H7200G) — niphal narrative verb; the niphal stem here conveys that Yehovah made himself visible/perceptible, a passive-reflexive nuance not fully captured by the active English "appeared."
• 'El Shaddai ("God Almighty", H0410G + H7706) — a divine epithet combining the noun 'el ("God") in construct-like apposition with the proper title Shaddai; functions as a self-identification formula, not a full sentence with a copula (no verb "to be" appears in the Hebrew).
• hithhalekh ("walk about", H1980I) — hithpael imperative; the hithpael stem often marks reflexive or iterative action, so this is not a single act of walking but a continuous, self-involved conduct.
• tamim ("blameless", H8549H) — adjective in the predicate position after the imperative heyeh ("be", H1961), describing the resulting state expected from the addressee.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav chain (va-yehi, "and he was") establishing Abram's age through the construct phrase ben-tish'im shanah ve-tesha' shanim ("a son of ninety years and nine years"), the standard Hebrew idiom for stating age using the construct noun ben. The narrative continues with va-yera' Yehovah 'el-Avram ("and Yehovah appeared to Abram"), where the niphal verb yera' indicates that the deity became visible or manifest to Abram, rather than Abram simply perceiving him through ordinary means.

The divine speech begins with 'ani-'El Shaddai ("I - God Almighty"), a nominal clause without a linking verb in the Hebrew; the identification is made by simple apposition of the pronoun 'ani ("I", H0589) and the title. Two imperatives follow: hithhalekh lefanai ("walk about before me"), using the hithpael stem of halakh ("to walk", H1980I) which the data marks as reflexive, and ve-heyeh tamim ("and be blameless"), a qal imperative of hayah ("to be", H1961) followed by the adjective tamim. The two commands are joined by a simple conjunctive vav, presenting them as a paired directive rather than two separate, unrelated commands.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'El Shaddai as "ὁ θεός σου" ("your God"), replacing the title "Almighty" with a possessive construction absent from the Hebrew Shaddai. The Vulgate instead translates 'El Shaddai as "Deus omnipotens" ("God omnipotent"), preserving the sense of "Almighty" found in the Hebrew Shaddai (H7706) more closely than the LXX does. The Hebrew age formula ben-tish'im shanah ve-tesha' shanim ("a son of ninety years and nine years") is rendered in the LXX and Vulgate simply as "ninety-nine years," omitting the Hebrew's two-part construct-and-conjunction structure.