Genesis 22:3

Summary

Genesis 22:3 narrates Abraham's actions the morning after receiving the command to sacrifice Isaac: he rises early, saddles his donkey, takes two servants and Isaac, cuts wood for the burnt offering, and sets out toward the place God had designated.

Key words

• va.i.yash.Kem ("he rose early", H7925) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb; the causative stem suggests Abraham actively caused himself to rise early, more emphatic than a simple "he woke up."
• va.i.ya.cha.Vosh ("he saddled", H2280) — qal narrative verb continuing the chain of sequential actions ("and then he saddled").
• cha.mo.R ("donkey", H2543) — construct form followed by the suffix o ("his"), producing "his donkey"; the construct state links the noun directly to its possessor.
• ne.'a.Ra ("servants", H5288) — masculine plural construct, governed by she.Nei ("two of", H8147), forming the phrase "two of his servants" (literally "two of the young-men-of-him").
• va.i.Ya.kom ("he arose", H6965B) and va.i.Ye.lekh ("he went", H1980G) — two consecutive qal narrative verbs, both introduced by the narrative va (H9001), marking the final steps in the sequence before arrival at the destination.

What the text says

The verse is built as an uninterrupted chain of narrative vav-consecutive verbs (H9001 attached to H7925, H2280, H3947G, H1234, H6965B, H1980G), each meaning "and then X happened." This grammatical structure is the standard Biblical Hebrew device for sequential narration: one action follows directly upon the last, without separate temporal markers such as "then" or "afterward" needed in English. The rapid succession of six verbs — rising, saddling, taking, cutting, arising, going — produces a compressed, action-focused account with no reported speech or internal reflection from Abraham.

The phrase she.Nei ne.'a.Rav ("two of his servants," H8147 + H5288 + suffix) uses a construct chain typical of Hebrew numerals governing a following noun. Similarly, cha.mo.Ro ("his donkey") and be.No ("his son," H1121A + suffix) both use construct nouns with pronominal suffixes rather than separate possessive words, a common feature of Hebrew that compresses possession into the noun's ending.

The final clause, introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("which," H0834A), attaches a subordinate clause to ha.ma.Kom ("the place," H4725): "the place which ha.'E.lo.Him ('God,' H0430G) had said to him." The verb 'a.mar ("he had said," H0559) is a qal perfect, indicating an action completed prior to the main narrative sequence — the divine instruction given earlier in the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a temporal note absent from the Hebrew text and the Vulgate: "τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ" ("on the third day"), placed at the end of the verse after "the place God told him," where the Hebrew and Vulgate end simply with "the place which God had told him." The Vulgate specifies "de nocte" ("at night/before dawn") for the rising, an added temporal nuance not explicit in the Hebrew ba.Bo.ker ("in the morning," H1242), which simply denotes daytime's onset without specifying pre-dawn timing.