Genesis 18:14

Summary

The verse poses a rhetorical question about whether anything is too difficult for Yehovah, followed by a promise: at the appointed time, described idiomatically as "the time of life," Yehovah will return and Sarah will have a son.

Key words

• yippale ("is it too difficult", H6381) — niphal imperfect verb, giving the sense of something being extraordinary or beyond ordinary capability; the niphal stem here marks a passive/reflexive nuance, as if asking whether a matter would "prove itself" too hard.
• YHWH ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine proper name appears directly in the Hebrew text, marking the speaker of the rhetorical question as the deity by his personal name rather than a generic title.
• davar ("thing/word/matter", H1697I) — a masculine singular noun with broad semantic range, meaning either a spoken word or any matter/affair; here it functions as the grammatical subject of the question, meaning "any matter."
• mo'ed ("appointed time", H4150G) — a technical term for a fixed or designated time, used with the preposition la ("to the") to indicate the specific future point of return.
• chayyah ("living", H2416A) — a feminine singular adjective modifying 'et ("time", H6256), forming the construct phrase "time of life," an idiom whose precise sense (a year's cycle, a season, or "when life/childbirth occurs") is not fully transparent from the grammar alone.

What the text says

The verse opens with the interrogative particle ha (H9008) attached to the niphal imperfect yippale (H6381), creating a yes/no question: "Is it too difficult...?" The subject of this difficulty is davar (H1697I, "a thing/matter"), and the preposition me (H9006, "from/for") introduces YHWH (H3068G) as the one for whom the matter might or might not be too hard. This forms a self-contained rhetorical question with no stated answer in the verse itself.

The second half shifts to a first-person promise: 'ashuv (H7725G, "I will return"), a qal imperfect, describes a future action performed by the speaker (identified as YHWH in the preceding clause) toward the addressee, marked by 'eleikha ("to you", H0413 + suffix H9031). The timing is specified twice: first with la-mo'ed ("to the appointed time", H4150G), a fixed technical time-marker, and then reinforced by the phrase ka'et chayyah (H6256 + H2416A), literally "according to the time of the living [one]" or "time of life." This construct phrase is grammatically clear (a feminine adjective modifying a construct noun) but semantically compact — the Hebrew does not specify whether this means a calendar year, a life-cycle event, or a birth-related timeframe. The clause ends with u-le-Sarah ben ("and to Sarah a son", H9002 + H8283 + H1121A), a nominal clause without a verb, stating that a son will belong to Sarah at that time.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew names YHWH (H3068G) directly, while the LXX (fragmentary here, showing παρὰ τῷ with a gap) and the Vulgate ("Deo") use a generic term for God rather than the personal name. For the idiom ka'et chayyah ("according to the time of life"), the LXX renders this as εἰς ὥρας ("about the hours/season"), the Vulgate as "hoc eodem tempore, vita comite" ("at this same time, life accompanying"), and the Hebrew's construct phrase itself remains ambiguous — three distinct interpretive strategies for the same compact Hebrew expression. The LXX also reads εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τοῦτον ("at this time") where the Hebrew has la-mo'ed ("to the appointed time"), a term more specifically tied to a fixed or designated point.