Genesis 21:20

Summary

Genesis 21:20 reports that God was present with the boy (Ishmael), who grew up, settled in the wilderness, and became an archer. The verse is structured as a chain of four narrative verbs marking successive stages in the boy's life.

Key words

• yehi ("he was", H1961) — qal narrative form of the verb "to be," used twice in the verse (opening and closing), framing the boy's development between God's presence and his final identity as an archer.
• 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun functioning as the subject of the first yehi clause; it is the entity said to be "with" the boy.
• na'ar ("lad", H5288) — masculine singular noun with the definite article (ha-na'ar, "the lad"), designating Ishmael as the object of divine presence.
• yigdal ("he grew up", H1431) — qal narrative verb continuing the chain of actions describing the boy's growth.
• roveh ("a shooter", H7235B) — qal participle, masculine singular, paired with qashat ("a bowman", H7199) to form the closing description of the boy's occupation.

What the text says

The verse is built on four consecutive narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — yehi ("he was"), yigdal ("he grew"), yeshev ("he dwelt"), and again yehi ("he was") — each advancing the story in sequence. The repetition of yehi at the beginning and end creates a frame: the first yehi introduces God's presence with ha-na'ar ("the lad", H5288) using the preposition 'et ("with", H854), and the second yehi introduces his final state as roveh qashat. This structure places the boy's growth and settlement in the wilderness (ba-midbar, H4057B) between two statements of "being," so that his development is bracketed by divine accompaniment on one side and his adult identity as an archer on the other.

The final phrase roveh qashat combines a participle ("shooter") with a noun ("bowman"), a construction not reproduced by a single Hebrew root elsewhere in the passage; the two words together function as a descriptive title for his skill or occupation, rather than as separate actions.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the closing phrase as a single noun, toxotes ("archer"), collapsing the Hebrew's two-word construction (roveh qashat) into one term, and states ho theos ("the God") explicitly as in the Hebrew. The Vulgate, by contrast, does not name God explicitly in this verse, using instead cum eo ("with him"), and it adds the word juvenis ("young man"), a term not present in the Hebrew text, before sagittarius ("archer").