Genesis 17:15

Summary

God speaks to Abraham about his wife, instructing him that she will no longer be called Sarai (H8297) but rather Sarah (H8283). The verse gives the divine command for the name change along with the reason introduced by ki ("for", H3588A).

Key words

• Yomer ("he said", H0559) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine, continuing the sequential narrative chain begun by the vav.
• ishtekha ("your wife", H0802H) — feminine singular noun in construct form with the second-person masculine suffix -kha ("your"), literally "wife of you."
• tiqra ("you will call", H7121H) — qal imperfect, second person masculine, expressing a future or ongoing prohibition when combined with the negation lo ("not", H3808).
• shemah ("her name", H8034) — masculine singular noun in construct form with the third-person feminine suffix -ah ("her"), appearing twice in the verse (positions 12–13 and 17–18).
• ki ("for", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing the clause that states the reason or content of the new name.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer Elohim el-Avraham ("and God said to Abraham"), a standard construction that advances the story sequentially. The divine speech that follows is built around a prohibition: lo-tiqra et-shemah Sarai ("you will not call her name Sarai"). The verb tiqra is in the imperfect, which in this negated construction functions as a durative prohibition — an instruction not to use the name Sarai (H8297) going forward, rather than a single-instance command.

The second half of the verse, introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), states the new reality: Sarah shemah ("Sarah [is] her name"). This clause has no verb "to be" expressed — it is a nominal sentence in Hebrew, where the two nouns Sarah and shemah ("her name") are simply juxtaposed. The construct form shemah ("her name", H8034) appears in both halves of the verse, tying the old name and the new name to the same grammatical structure — "her name" was Sarai, "her name" is Sarah.

The name Sarai (H8297) and Sarah (H8283) differ in Hebrew script only by the final letter, a distinction the Hebrew text preserves visually and phonetically.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second name as Σάρρα (Sarra), doubling the rho, and explicitly adds ἀλλά ("but"), making the contrast between the old and new names more syntactically explicit than the Hebrew's juxtaposed nominal clause. The Vulgate similarly supplies sed ("but") before Saram, again making explicit a contrast that in the Hebrew is conveyed only through the particle ki ("for") without a direct adversative conjunction.