Genesis 23:16

Summary

The verse narrates Abraham's response to Ephron's price for the field: he agrees and weighs out four hundred shekels of silver in the presence of the Hittites, using the weight standard current among merchants.

Key words

• yishma' ("he listened", H8085G) — qal narrative verb; opens the sequence, marking Abraham's action as a direct consequence of what precedes.
• yishqol ("he weighed out", H8254) — qal narrative verb; the physical act of weighing silver, standard practice before minted coinage.
• diber ("he had spoken", H1696I) — piel perfect; the piel stem intensifies the verb (to speak/declare), and the perfect aspect marks this as a completed prior action relative to the weighing.
• 'ozne ("[the] ears of", H0241H) — feminine dual construct; used idiomatically in the phrase "in the ears of," meaning "in the hearing of," emphasizing public witness.
• 'over ("passing along", H5674A) — qal participle; describes silver "current" or circulating according to merchant standard, paired with socher ("trader", H5503), also a participle, forming the phrase "current with the merchant."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two sequential narrative verbs joined by the vav-consecutive: va-yishma' ("and he listened/agreed") followed by va-yishqol ("and he weighed out"), both with Abraham as subject. This chaining presents the agreement and the payment as two linked, sequential events rather than a single transaction. The object of weighing, ha-kesef ("the silver", H3701G), is marked by the untranslated object particle 'et (H0853) and further specified by a relative clause: 'asher diber ("which he had spoken"), using the piel perfect of dabar, indicating that the amount had already been formally stated by Ephron before this moment.

The clause be-'ozne vene-Chet ("in the ears of the sons of Heth") uses the construct dual of 'ozen ("ear") to express publicness — the transaction occurs with the Hittites as auditory witnesses, not merely observers. The final phrase stacks two construct nouns, arba me'ot sheqel kesef ("four hundred shekel of silver"), specifying quantity, unit, and material in sequence, then qualifies this silver with two parallel qal participles, 'over ("passing/current") and la-socher ("to/for the trader"), meaning the silver was weighed according to the standard recognized among merchants — a note on weight-standard reliability rather than coin denomination, since these are participles describing usage, not proper nouns for currency.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yishqol ("he weighed out") with apekatestesen ("he restored" or "paid back"), a different verb concept from the Hebrew's physical weighing action. The LXX also translates the sheqel unit as didrachma ("double-drachma"), substituting a Greek monetary unit for the Hebrew weight term. Where the Hebrew states silver "passing/current to the trader" ('over la-socher), the LXX adds dokimou ("tested/approved") and entorois (variously rendered), an interpretive expansion not present as separate lexemes in the Hebrew participial phrase. The Vulgate similarly expands this into probatae monetae publicae ("of approved public coinage"), introducing the concept of official/public coinage, which is not explicit in the Hebrew's participial construction describing merchant-standard weight.