Genesis 20:3

Summary

God comes to Abimelech in a nighttime dream and announces to him that he is "about to die" because of the woman he has taken, since she already belongs to a husband. The verse frames this as direct divine speech occurring within a dream.

Key words

• va-yavo ("and he came", H0935G) — qal narrative verb form (vayyiqtol) marking sequential action: God's coming is presented as the next event in the story.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — grammatically plural noun functioning as the subject; used here as the agent who initiates contact through the dream.
• ba-chalom ha-laylah ("in a dream of the night", H2472 + H3915) — construct-like phrase with the definite article on "night," specifying the temporal/medium setting of the divine communication.
• met ("dying/about to die", H4191G) — qal participle, not a finite past or future verb; participles denote an ongoing or imminent state, so the form conveys "you are a man on the verge of death" rather than a simple future prediction.
• be'ulat ba'al ("possessed of a husband", H1166I + H1167I) — passive participle in construct with "husband," a fixed idiomatic construction describing marital status, literally "owned/married-one of a husband."

What the text says

The verse opens with two chained narrative verbs, va-yavo ("and he came") and va-yomer ("and he said"), both qal forms in the vayyiqtol pattern typical of Hebrew narrative sequence. This grammar presents God's arrival and speech as a continuous, single narrative movement rather than two separate reported events. The setting is specified by ba-chalom ha-laylah, "in the dream of the night," where the article on layelah ("the night") ties the dream to a specific narrative night already established in context.

The divine speech itself begins with the interjection hinneh ("here/behold", H2009) attached to the second-person suffix -kha ("you"), producing the emphatic construction "here-you," followed by the participle met. Because met is a participle and not a finite verb, the Hebrew does not state flatly "you will die" but rather presents Abimelech's state as one of imminent or ongoing death — a nuance obscured when translated as a simple future ("you shall die") or a resultative phrase ("you are as good as dead").

The final clause identifies the woman's status using the passive participle construct be'ulat ba'al, "possessed/married of a husband." This idiom, built from the root of ba'al ("husband/master"), expresses her marital bond through a construct relationship rather than a separate clause like "she has a husband," which is how the Vulgate renders it (habet enim virum, "for she has a husband").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate turns the participial be'ulat ba'al construction into a full clause, habet enim virum ("for she has a husband"), rendering the idiom analytically rather than preserving its construct-participle form. The LXX similarly shifts to a finite verbal phrase, συνῳκηκυῖα ἀνδρί ("having dwelt together with a man"), using a perfect participle tied to a dative rather than the Hebrew's construct-based idiom. Both versions also convert the Hebrew participle met ("dying/about to die") into more explicit future or presumptive statements ("you shall die," "εἶ ἀποθνήσκεις"/"you are dying"), smoothing the Hebrew's participial ambiguity into a clearer temporal claim.