Genesis 20:6

Summary

The verse reports God's response to Abimelech in a dream, affirming that he acted with a blameless heart when he took Sarah, and stating that God himself prevented him from touching her, thereby keeping him from sinning.

Key words

• cha.lom ("a dream", H2472) — masculine singular noun with preposition ba ("in"), marking the mode of divine communication.
• tom-levav-kha ("integrity of your heart", H8537 + H3824) — construct chain (noun + noun in construct + 2ms suffix), literally "the completeness of your heart," describing the moral state behind Abimelech's action.
• 'ach.Sokh ("I have restrained", H2820) — qal narrative verb, 1st person, continuing the narrative chain with va- ("and then"), showing God as the active agent who withheld Abimelech.
• me.cha.tov-li ("from sinning against me", H2398) — qal infinitive with preposition me ("from") and 1cs suffix li ("to me"), expressing purpose/result — restraining "from" the act of sinning.
• ne.ta.Ti-kha ("I have permitted you", H5414) — qal perfect, 1st person with 2ms suffix, negated by lo' ("not"), stating the completed divine action of not allowing.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb va-yo.mer ("and he said", H0559) introducing direct speech from ha-'Elohim ("the God", H0430) in ba-chalom ("in a dream", H2472), continuing the dream-speech begun in the prior verse. The adverb gam ("also", H1571) paired with 'anokhi ("I", H0595) — "I also" — creates emphasis, contrasting or aligning God's knowledge with Abimelech's own claim of innocence stated earlier in the narrative.

The clause ki ve-tom-levav-kha 'asita zot ("that in the integrity of your heart you did this") uses the construct noun chain tom-levav to describe the internal moral condition, not merely the external act. The verb 'asita ("you did", H6213) is a qal perfect, marking the action as completed.

The second half of the verse repeats the gam 'anokhi ("I also") construction with the narrative verb 'ach.sokh ("I have restrained", H2820), followed by the infinitive me-chatov-li ("from sinning to me/against me"). The final clause uses lo' netati-kha li-ngo'a 'eleiha ("I have not permitted you to touch her") — a negated perfect verb netati (H5414) governing the infinitive li-ngo'a ("to touch", H5060), with the preposition 'el ("to/toward", H0413) plus 3fs suffix marking "her" as the object of the touching.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tom-levav-kha ("integrity of your heart") as en katharā kardia ("in a pure heart"), using "pure" rather than the Hebrew's "complete/whole" (tom, H8537). The Vulgate's simplici corde ("simple heart") similarly shifts the semantic field from wholeness to simplicity. Where the Hebrew text uses two separate verbs — 'achsokh ("I restrained", H2820) and netati ("I permitted", H5414) — the LXX uses epheisamēn ("I spared/refrained") for the first and aphēka ("I let go/allowed") for the second, while the Vulgate uses custodivi ("I guarded/kept") and dimisi ("I let go"), each version choosing distinct verbal nuances for the two Hebrew perfects.