Genesis 18:33

Summary

The verse closes the dialogue between Yehovah and Abraham concerning Sodom: Yehovah departs once he has finished speaking, and Abraham returns to his own place.

Key words

• va-Yelekh ("and he went", H1980M) — qal narrative form with the narrative vav, marking the next sequential event in the story: Yehovah's departure.
• ka'asher ("just as", H9004 + H0834D) — preposition plus relative particle forming a comparative/temporal clause, linking Yehovah's going to the completion of his speaking.
• killah ("he had finished", H3615G) — piel perfect of a verb expressing completed action; the piel stem here conveys the sense of bringing something to an end.
• leDabber ("to speak", H1696G) — piel infinitive construct, dependent on killah, expressing the action that was finished ("finished speaking").
• shav ("he returned", H7725G) — qal perfect, a completed action parallel to va-Yelekh, describing Abraham's corresponding movement.
• limqomo ("to his place", H4725 + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, "place of him," marking the destination of Abraham's return.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002). The first clause has Yehovah as subject: va-Yelekh Yehovah ka'asher killah ledabber 'el-Avraham — "and Yehovah went, just as he had finished speaking to Abraham." The temporal clause introduced by ka'asher ("just as") plus the piel perfect killah ("he had finished") governs the infinitive ledabber ("to speak"), producing the sense "as soon as he finished speaking." This construction places the completion of speech as the precise marker for the moment of departure, tying the verb of motion (va-Yelekh) to the verb of completion.

The second clause shifts subject to Abraham: ve-Avraham shav limqomo — "and Abraham returned to his place." Both main verbs, va-Yelekh (Yehovah's going) and shav (Abraham's returning), are completed-action forms, giving the verse a symmetrical structure: one figure departs, the other returns, each movement reported without further elaboration. The suffixed noun limqomo ("to his place") uses the third-person possessive suffix, anchoring the return specifically to a location already associated with Abraham in the narrative, though the text does not specify what that place is beyond the pronoun.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-Yelekh ("and he went") with apēlthen ("departed"), and restructures the sentence so that "the Lord departed" appears after the temporal clause rather than at its head, unlike the Hebrew word order. The Vulgate's abiit ("he went away") and reversus est ("he returned") parallel the Hebrew verbs closely. The Vulgate refers to Abraham in the second clause simply as ille ("he/that one") rather than repeating the name Avraham, where the Hebrew text repeats the proper name explicitly in both clauses.