Genesis 17:12

Summary

Genesis 17:12 specifies the timing and scope of circumcision: every male is to be circumcised at eight days old, across all generations, whether born within the household or acquired by purchase from a foreigner.

Key words

• yimmol ("he will be circumcised", H4135A) — niphal imperfect, a passive/reflexive stem indicating the male undergoes the action rather than performing it himself; the imperfect aspect gives it an ongoing, generation-spanning force rather than a single command.
• ben ("a son of", H1121L) — construct form linking to "eight days," a Hebrew idiom where "son of X days" expresses age (literally "a son of eight days").
• dorotekhem (from dorotei, "generations", H1755 + suffix) — feminine plural construct with 2nd person plural suffix, "your generations," marking the law as extending through successive descendants, not a one-time act.
• yelid bayit ("one born of [the] household", H3211 + H1004M) — construct chain meaning "one born in the house," contrasted with the next phrase.
• miqnat kesef ("a purchase of silver", H4736 + H3701G) — construct chain literally "acquisition of silver," referring to a person acquired by payment, set against yelid bayit.

What the text says

The verse opens with the idiomatic construct ben shemonat yamim ("son of eight days"), a common Hebrew way of stating age by placing a person in construct relation with a number of time-units. The verb yimmol is niphal imperfect — a passive form ("he will be circumcised") that removes the male as grammatical agent, presenting the action as something done to him. This differs from an active formulation and signals that the male is a patient in the ritual described, not its actor.

The scope of application is marked by kol-zakhar ("every male," H3605 + H2145) combined with le-dorotekhem ("for your generations"), extending the rule beyond the immediate audience (Abraham's household) into an indefinite line of descendants. The text then distinguishes two categories of males subject to this rule via two construct chains: yelid bayit ("one born of the household") and miqnat kesef ("a purchase of silver"), the latter further specified as "from every ben-nekhar" (H1121L + H5236, literally "son of foreignness," i.e., a foreigner). The relative clause asher lo mi-zar'akha hu ("who is not from your seed, he") uses the preposition min ("from") with zera ("seed/offspring", H2233H) to state explicitly that these purchased males are not blood descendants — yet the imperfect yimmol still applies to them, extending the command beyond genealogical descendants of the addressee.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yelid bayit as ho oikogenēs tēs oikias sou ("the home-born of your house"), making explicit the possessive "your" that is only implicit in the Hebrew construct chain. The LXX also translates ben shemonat yamim as paidion oktō hēmerōn ("a child of eight days"), using paidion ("child") where the Hebrew has ben ("son"). The Vulgate's infans octo dierum similarly shifts to "infant" rather than "son," and adds tam...quam ("both...as") to explicitly pair "home-born" and "purchased" as parallel categories, a connective not present as such in the Hebrew's simple u- ("and").