Genesis 17:6

Summary

The verse continues a divine speech, stating that the addressee (Abraham) will be made abundantly fruitful, will become a source of nations, and that kings will descend from him. It uses three parallel verb clauses joined by sequential vav, each describing a distinct future outcome.

Key words

• hifreti ("I will make fruitful", H6509) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the causative stem marks that the subject (God) actively causes the fruitfulness, not that the addressee produces it himself.
• bimə'od mə'od ("with muchness, muchness", H3966 doubled) — the noun "muchness" is repeated for intensification; doubling a term in Biblical Hebrew is a common way to express an extreme degree ("exceedingly").
• netatikha ("I will make you", H5414I) — qal sequential perfect with 2ms suffix "you": a simple-stem verb (not causative) indicating a direct act of "giving/setting" the addressee into a new status.
• goyim ("nations", H1471A) — masculine plural noun, the result/purpose introduced by the preposition le ("into"), marking transformation into a category rather than mere possession.
• yetze'u ("they will come out", H3318M) — qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural: an imperfect form signaling an ongoing or future unfolding action, distinct from the perfect verbs used earlier in the verse.

What the text says

The verse is built on three sequential perfect/imperfect verb clauses linked by the narrative vav (ve/u), a typical Biblical Hebrew construction for listing consecutive future events within a divine promise. The first clause uses hifreti ("I will make fruitful"), a hiphil form that grammatically encodes causation — the fruitfulness is presented as something God brings about in the addressee ('otkha, marked by the direct object marker H0853 plus 2ms suffix), not something the addressee does on his own. The intensity of this fruitfulness is expressed through the doubled noun bimə'od mə'od ("with muchness, muchness"), a repetition device rather than a comparative or superlative grammatical form.

The second clause, u-netatikha le-goyim ("and I will give/set you into nations"), uses a qal (non-causative) perfect verb netatikha, with the preposition le ("into") indicating the result of the action — the addressee is placed into the status/category of "nations" (goyim, H1471A, masculine plural), rather than merely receiving nations as possessions.

The final clause shifts verbal aspect: u-melakhim mimmekha yetze'u ("and kings from you will come out") places the subject melakhim ("kings") before the verb, and uses an imperfect verb yetze'u ("they will come out") instead of a perfect. This shift in verb form marks a distinction between the completed-sequence perfects of the first two clauses and an ongoing/future emergence expressed by the imperfect.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hifreti ("I will make fruitful") as αὐξάνω ("I increase/multiply"), a present-tense verb, differing from the Hebrew's causative perfect form. The Vulgate's faciam te crescere ("I will make you grow") preserves a causative sense closer to the Hebrew hiphil but uses an infinitive construction ("to grow") rather than a single fientive verb like "fruitful."