Genesis 22:4

Summary

The verse marks a temporal transition — "on the third day" — and describes two sequential actions by Abraham: lifting up his eyes and seeing the place from a distance. The narrative uses two verbs in the same grammatical pattern to convey a cause-and-effect sequence of perception.

Key words

• ba-Yom ("in the day", H9003+H3117G) — preposition + noun forming the temporal marker "on the day," fixing the narrative moment.
• ha-shelishi ("the third", H9009+H7992) — definite ordinal number agreeing with "day," specifying which day within the story's timeline.
• va-yisSa ("and he lifted up", H5375M) — qal narrative verb (vav-consecutive), indicating a completed sequential action: "and then he lifted."
• 'einav ("his eyes", H5869A) — feminine dual noun in construct with pronominal suffix, referring to both eyes together, common in expressions of looking.
• va-yar' ("and he saw", H7200G) — second qal narrative verb, continuing the vav-consecutive chain, marking the result of the lifting of eyes.
• me-rachok ("from a distance", H9006+H7350) — preposition + adjective, describing the spatial relation between Abraham and "the place" (ha-maqom, H4725).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a temporal phrase, ba-Yom ha-shelishi ("on the third day"), which anchors the action in the story's timeline before any verb appears. This is followed by two verbs joined by the narrative vav (va-yisSa and va-yar'), both in the qal form and both third-person masculine singular, referring to Abraham. This construction creates a tight sequence: the lifting of the eyes (va-yisSa 'et-'einav, "he lifted up his eyes") directly precedes and causes the seeing (va-yar' 'et-ha-maqom, "he saw the place"). The object marker 'et (H0853) appears before both "his eyes" and "the place," marking them grammatically as the direct objects of their respective verbs, though the marker itself carries no independent meaning in translation.

The phrase me-rachok ("from a distance") modifies the verb "he saw" by specifying the spatial condition under which the seeing occurred — the place was visible from far off, not that Abraham was far from it in a general sense.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the Hebrew's two verbs (va-yisSa, "he lifted up," and va-yar', "he saw") with a single participial construction, ἀναβλέψας ("having looked up"), followed by the main verb for seeing, and does not translate the temporal phrase "on the third day" in the segment given. The Vulgate preserves the temporal marker (Die autem tertio, "but on the third day") and condenses the Hebrew's two verbs into elevatis oculis, vidit ("with eyes lifted up, he saw"), using an ablative absolute construction rather than two sequential finite verbs as in the Hebrew.