Genesis 21:8

Summary

The verse narrates three sequential events: the child grew, he was weaned, and Abraham prepared a great feast on the day of the weaning. The passage closes the narrative unit about Isaac's early childhood with a chain of consecutive actions marked by the same grammatical pattern.

Key words

• va-yiggdal ("and he grew up", H1431) — qal narrative form with the narrative vav, opening the sequence of events.
• yiggamal ("he was weaned", H1580) — niphal (passive) narrative form, indicating the child underwent weaning rather than performing an action himself.
• ya'as ("he prepared/made", H6213H) — qal narrative form, marking Abraham as the active subject of the feast preparation.
• hiGGamel ("was weaned", H1580) — niphal infinitive, same root as word 6, used here to specify the occasion ("in the being-weaned of...").
• be-yom ("on the day of", H9003 + H3117G) — construct noun phrase linking the feast directly to the temporal marker of the weaning event.

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on the narrative vav construction (vayyiqtol), producing a tight chain of three consecutive actions: growing, weaning, and feast-making. This grammatical pattern in Biblical Hebrew signals sequential storytelling — each verb form implies "and then," creating a rapid succession of events without extended description.

Notably, the verb yiggamal ("he was weaned", H1580) appears twice in the verse — first as a finite narrative verb (word 6) and then as an infinitive construct higgamel (word 14) within the phrase be-yom higgamel ("on the day of the weaning"). Both instances use the niphal stem, marking the child as the recipient of the weaning action rather than its agent. This repetition of the same root creates a structural echo: the feast is explicitly tied back to the weaning event by restating the verb rather than using a pronoun or simple reference.

The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before Yitzchak (Isaac, H3327) in the final clause marks Isaac grammatically as the one who "was weaned," even though the verb is passive — this is a feature of Hebrew niphal constructions where the object marker can still appear with the logical subject of a passive verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the closing phrase with an added specification: Isaak ho huios autou ("Isaac, his son"), where the Hebrew has only 'et-Yitzchak ("Isaac"). The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with ablactationis ejus ("of his weaning"), using a possessive pronoun rather than restating "his son" as the LXX does.