Genesis 22:15

Summary

The verse reports a second call by the angel of Yehovah to Abraham, this time issued from heaven. The Hebrew marks this explicitly as a repeated event using an ordinal number, and specifies the divine origin of the voice as "the heavens."

Key words

• va-yikra ("and he called", H7121G) — qal narrative verb form; the prefixed vav places this action in sequence with what precedes, "and then he called."
• mal'akh ("angel of / messenger of", H4397H) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be joined to the following word ("angel of X"); it is not a free-standing noun here.
• Yehovah (H3068G) — the divine name, functioning as the noun completing the construct chain begun by mal'akh: "angel of Yehovah."
• sheni t ("a second [time]", H8145) — feminine singular ordinal number, also in construct form; it modifies the timing of the verb's action, marking this as a repetition.
• shamayim ("heavens", H8064) — masculine plural noun, preceded by the definite article ha (H9009) and the preposition min (H4480A), together yielding "from the heavens."

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative vav attached to yikra, a standard construction in Biblical Hebrew narrative that signals sequential action: "and he called." The subject is expressed through a construct chain, mal'akh Yehovah — literally "messenger/angel of Yehovah" — where mal'akh (H4397H) is grammatically bound to the following proper name, so the two words function as a single unit denoting the specific agent performing the calling.

The phrase sheni t min-hashamayim ("a second time from the heavens") supplies two pieces of information about the action. First, the ordinal sheni t (H8145), in feminine construct form, indicates that this call is a repetition of an earlier one — the text does not narrate the first call again but marks numerically that this is the second occurrence. Second, min-hashamayim specifies the spatial origin of the call: the preposition min ("from", H4480A) combined with the definite plural noun hashamayim ("the heavens", H8064) locates the calling event as originating from the sky/heavens, distinguishing it from a call that might originate from a person standing nearby.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mal'akh with the article omitted before ton Abraam ("the angel of the Lord called Abraham"), differing slightly from the Hebrew's use of the preposition 'el ("to", H0413) before Abraham's name — the Hebrew shows the calling directed toward Abraham, while the Greek constructs it as calling him directly as a direct object. The Vulgate's secundo corresponds closely to the Hebrew ordinal sheni t, and de caelo parallels min-hashamayim, showing no substantive divergence in these elements across the three textual traditions.