Genesis 21:16

Summary

The verse narrates Hagar walking away and sitting down at a distance from the boy, explicitly measured as a bowshot away, because she states she cannot watch him die. The narrative then repeats her sitting "opposite" him before describing her raising her voice in weeping.

Key words

• harchek ("at a distance", H7368) — hiphil infinitive absolute, used adverbially to intensify the distance already indicated by minneged ("from before/opposite").
• metachavei qeshet ("shooters of a bow", H2909) — piel participle plural construct with qeshet ("bow", H7198); together with ki ("like", H9004) this forms a fixed distance-idiom, "like a bowshot."
• ki ("for/that", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing the reported reason for her action, linking her physical withdrawal to her internal statement.
• mot ha-yaled ("death of the boy", H4194 + H3206) — construct chain; mot is a bound noun requiring ha-yaled to complete its meaning, literally "the-death-of the-boy" rather than a separate clause "the boy dies."
• vatisa et-qolah ("and she lifted up her voice", H5375N + H6963A) — construct noun qol ("voice") with 3fs suffix, forming the idiom for weeping aloud, followed immediately by vatevk ("she wept", H1058).

What the text says

The passage is built as a chain of narrative (wayyiqtol) verbs — vateilekh, vateshev, vateshev, vatisa, vatevk — each marked by the narrative vav (H9001), which strings the actions in sequence: she went, she sat, [she spoke internally], she sat again, she lifted her voice, she wept. This repetition of teshev minneged ("she sat opposite/before") after the quoted reasoning creates a frame around her statement, as if the narrative pauses to explain her motive and then resumes the physical action of sitting.

The distance phrase minneged harchek kimtachavei qeshet stacks three elements — preposition minneged ("from opposite"), infinitive absolute harchek ("far off"), and the comparative idiom "like bow-shooters" — to give a spatial measurement without a numeral, relying instead on an image of archery range. Her internal statement, introduced by ki ("for/that"), uses the construct phrase mot ha-yaled ("death of-the-boy") rather than a finite clause, which nominalizes the anticipated event as a single entity she does not wish to "see" ('er'eh, H7200G).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew and Vulgate agree that the final weeping belongs to Hagar: Hebrew vatisa... vatevk ("she lifted... she wept") and Vulgate "levavit vocem suam et flevit" ("she lifted her voice and wept") both keep her as the subject. The LXX diverges here: its final clause reads "ἀναβοῆσαν δὲ τὸ παιδίον ἔκλανσεν" — "the child cried out and wept" — shifting the grammatical subject of the weeping from the mother to "the child" (τὸ παιδίον). The LXX also renders the reported reason as "τὸν θάνατον τοῦ παιδίου μου" ("the death of my child"), adding a possessive "my" not present in the bare construct mot ha-yaled of the Hebrew.