Genesis 21:3

Summary

Genesis 21:3 states that Abraham named the son born to him — the one Sarah bore him — Isaac. The verse is built as a single narrative sentence with two nested relative/participial clauses describing the son before the name itself appears.

Key words

• va-yyiqra ("and he called", H7121G) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine; opens the verse in the standard Hebrew narrative chain ("and then he called").
• shem-beno ("the name of his son", H8034 + H1121A) — two nouns in construct chain ("name of" + "son of"), with the pronominal suffix -o ("his") attached to ben ("son").
• ha-nolad-lo ("who had been born to him", H3205) — niphal (passive-type) perfect verb with definite article functioning as a relative ("the one born"), plus preposition-suffix lo ("to him"), marking Abraham as the one to whom the birth occurred.
• asher-yaldah-lo ("whom she had borne to him", H0834A + H3205) — relative particle asher introducing a qal perfect verb, third person feminine (yaldah, "she bore"), again followed by lo ("to him"), this time referring to Sarah as the one who gave birth.
• Yitzchak ("Isaac", H3327) — proper name, placed at the very end of the sentence as the object of the naming.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence places the verb yiqra ("he called") immediately after the narrative va-, with Abraham as subject, followed by the object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) before the phrase shem-beno ("the name of his son"). This construct chain is then modified by two successive descriptive clauses: first ha-nolad-lo, using the niphal (passive-voice-like) form of yalad ("to bear/be born") to describe the son as "the one born to him" (to Abraham), and second asher-yaldah-lo, using the active qal feminine form of the same root to state "whom she [Sarah] had borne to him." Both clauses use the same verbal root yalad (H3205) but in different verbal stems (niphal vs. qal) and different grammatical subjects (the son as passive recipient of birth vs. Sarah as active agent), producing a structural parallelism: the son is described first from Abraham's perspective (born to him) and then from Sarah's perspective (borne by her, to him). Only after these two qualifying clauses does the name Yitzchak ("Isaac") appear, placed at the very end as the direct object of the initial verb "he called."

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate render the construction similarly, preserving the double clause (τοῦ γενομένου αὐτῷ / "quem genuit ei"), though the LXX uses a participle (γενομένου, "the one having come to be") where the Hebrew uses a full niphal relative clause with the article. The BSB compresses both Hebrew clauses into a single phrase ("the son Sarah bore to him"), omitting a separate rendering of ha-nolad-lo ("who had been born to him") as distinct from asher-yaldah-lo ("whom she had borne to him").