Genesis 17:7

Summary

Genesis 17:7 states that God will establish a covenant between himself, the addressee (Abraham), and his descendants after him, across their generations, as a perpetual covenant. The purpose clause specifies that this covenant means God will become God to Abraham and to his descendants.

Key words

• ha.ki.moTi ("I will establish", H6965I) — hiphil (causative) verb in sequential perfect, first person: "I will cause to stand / establish," continuing the narrative sequence begun by the preceding verses.
• beri.Ti ("my covenant", H1285) — feminine singular noun in construct form with the 1st person suffix -i ("my"), naming the object being established.
• zar.'a.kha ("your offspring", H2233H) — masculine singular noun in construct form with 2nd person suffix -kha ("your"), repeated twice in the verse to mark both parties of the extended covenant.
• le.dorotam ("for their generations", H1755) — feminine plural noun in construct with 3rd person plural suffix -m ("their"), preceded by preposition le ("for"), indicating temporal extension across generations.
• le.hyot ("to become/to be", H1961) — qal infinitive with preposition le, introducing the purpose clause that defines the content of the covenant relationship.

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative vav attached to hakimoti ("I will establish"), a hiphil sequential perfect that continues the chain of divine speech from the prior verses. The object is berit-i ("my covenant"), marked by the direct object particle 'et. The parties of the covenant are laid out through a repeated construct chain using bein ("between", H0996G): "between me and between you and between your offspring after you." The word bein appears three times, each governing a pronominal suffix or noun, which in the Hebrew syntax creates a triadic structure (Abraham, God, and the offspring) rather than a simple binary pairing.

The phrase le-dorotam ("for their generations") extends the covenant temporally, followed by li-vrit 'olam ("to a covenant of perpetuity"), where 'olam (H5769G) qualifies the noun berit as unending in duration. The purpose or result of this covenant is introduced by the infinitive construct le-hyot ("to become"), governed by the preposition le, followed by lekha le-'lohim ("for you, for God") — a double le construction where the second le marks the predicate of a verb of becoming, a common Hebrew idiom (X le Y = "X to be Y" / "X as Y"). The final clause repeats ul-zar'akha 'achareikha ("and to your offspring after you"), mirroring the earlier construction and confirming that the divine-relational result applies to both Abraham and his descendants.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the threefold Hebrew bein...bein...bein structure more compactly with ἀνὰ μέσον used twice and a shortened third instance (ἀνὰ τοῦ σπέρματός σου), slightly reducing the parallelism visible in the Hebrew. The Vulgate's inter me et te, et inter semen tuum follows a similar contraction. The Hebrew lihyot lekha le-'lohim ("to become for you as God") is rendered in the LXX as εἶναί σου θεός ("to be your God") and in the Vulgate as ut sim Deus tuus ("that I may be your God"), both collapsing the double le idiom into a direct predicate without the intermediate "becoming" nuance carried by the Hebrew infinitive le-hyot.