Genesis 21:28

Summary

Abraham sets apart seven ewe-lambs from his flock, placing them separately by themselves. The verse describes a discrete physical action performed by Abraham on a specific portion of his livestock.

Key words

• va-yatzev ("and he set", H5324) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb: Abraham causes the lambs to stand/be positioned, not merely "puts" them; the hiphil stem signals deliberate, causative placement.
• 'et- (H0853) — direct object marker, untranslated, indicating that "seven ewe-lambs" is the direct object of Abraham's action.
• kivsot ("ewe-lambs of", H3535) — feminine plural construct noun; the construct form links it to ha-tzon ("the flock"), specifying these are female lambs belonging to that flock.
• ha-tzon ("the flock", H6629) — common gender singular noun with definite article, the collective body from which the seven lambs are drawn.
• levaddehen ("to/for themselves alone", H0905 + H9039) — construct noun bad ("alone/separateness") with preposition le- and 3rd person feminine plural suffix "them" — grammatically marks the lambs as set apart by themselves, distinct from the rest of the flock.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative vav attached to yatzev, continuing the story sequence ("and then he set"). The verb yatzev is in the hiphil stem, which is causative: Abraham does not simply "have" the lambs somewhere, he actively causes them to be stood or positioned in a particular state — here, separated. The subject is Avraham (H0085), and the object marked by 'et- is sheva kivsot ha-tzon ("seven ewe-lambs of the flock"), a construct chain where kivsot ("ewe-lambs of") governs ha-tzon ("the flock"), indicating these seven animals are drawn specifically from within his larger flock, not from an outside source.

The final phrase, levaddehen, is built from the noun bad (H0905), meaning "separateness" or "alone," in construct form with the preposition le- ("to/for") and the third-person feminine plural pronominal suffix -hen ("them," referring back to the feminine plural kivsot). This construction grammatically emphasizes that the lambs are isolated specifically as a distinct group unto themselves, reinforcing the causative sense of yatzev: the action results in a state of separateness for these seven animals.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yatzev with ἔστησεν ("he stood/set"), matching the causative sense, and translates levaddehen as μόνας ("alone," feminine plural), a single adjective rather than a construct-plus-suffix phrase. The Vulgate uses statuit ("he set/established") for yatzev and seorsum ("apart, separately") as an adverb for levaddehen, collapsing the Hebrew's noun-based construction into an adverbial form. The Hebrew levaddehen explicitly encodes gender and number agreement with the ewe-lambs via the suffix, a grammatical nuance not distinctly visible in either the Greek μόνας or the Latin seorsum, both of which convey "separately" without the same construct-based grammatical linkage.