Genesis 18:9

Summary

Genesis 18:9 records the visitors asking Abraham where Sarah is, and Abraham's reply that she is in the tent. The verse consists of two short question-and-answer exchanges linked by the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he/they said").

Key words

• 'ai.Yeh ("where?", H0346) — interrogative particle opening the visitors' question; it has no verb of its own, so the sentence "where is Sarah" is built by juxtaposition alone.
• sa.Rah ("Sarah", H8283) — proper noun, feminine, functioning as the subject of the implied verb "to be" in the question.
• 'ish.Te.kha ("your wife", H0802 + suffix) — feminine singular noun in construct with the 2nd person masculine singular suffix -kha ("your"), identifying Sarah's relation to Abraham.
• hi.Neh ("there!/behold", H2009) — interjection that opens Abraham's answer, pointing to a location rather than asserting a full clause.
• ba.'Ohel ("in the tent", H0168 with prefixed preposition and article) — locative phrase completing Abraham's answer.

What the text says

The verse is built from two verbless (nominal) clauses framed by two occurrences of the narrative verb va-yomer ("he/they said", H0559), which simply advances the narrative sequence without adding semantic content of its own. The question 'ai.Yeh sa.Rah 'ish.Te.kha ("where — Sarah — your wife") has no copula in Hebrew; the interrogative 'ai.Yeh stands directly before the subject and its appositional identification "your wife," a construction typical of Hebrew questions of location. Abraham's answer mirrors this structure: hi.Neh ba.'Ohel ("there — in the tent") also lacks a verb, relying on the deictic interjection hi.Neh plus a prepositional phrase to indicate location.

Word 3–4, 'e.La + v ("to him"), appear in the TAHOT text with unusual diacritical marks (small dots placed above several letters), a graphic feature of the Masoretic pointing of this particular word in this verse. The data provided does not explain the function of these marks beyond noting their presence on the letters of "to him."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew and the Vulgate both preserve the two-part question-and-answer structure, though the Vulgate adds a temporal clause absent from the Hebrew text given here: "Cumque comedissent" ("And when they had eaten"), which is not represented in the Hebrew word list for this verse. The LXX renders the question with the vocative-style Greek "Ηοῦ Σάρρα ἡ γυνή σου" and marks Abraham's answer with "ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν" ("but answering he said"), an explicit verb of response that has no counterpart in the Hebrew va-yomer ("and he said"), which does not specify "answering."