Genesis 23:17

Summary

The verse describes the legal confirmation of Ephron's field at Machpelah, near Mamre, together with the cave within it and all the trees within its borders. It functions as a formal, itemized description of the property being transferred in the transaction narrated in the surrounding chapter.

Key words

• va-yaqom ("and it was confirmed", H6965) — qal verb with narrative vav, third person masculine, marking the next event in the sequence; the root itself carries the sense of "standing/rising," here used for a legal transaction becoming established.
• sedeh ("field of", H7704) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking directly to the following proper name "Ephron"; construct form shows possession ("the field belonging to X").
• asher ("which/that", H0834) — relative particle, repeated five times in the verse, each time introducing a clause that further specifies a location (Machpelah, before Mamre, the cave, the field, the border).
• me'arah ("cave", H4631) — feminine singular noun, paired with the article ha ("the"), naming a specific object among the itemized properties.
• gevul ("border of", H1366) — masculine singular noun in construct state with a pronominal suffix o ("its"), specifying the limit or boundary of the field.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of nested relative clauses, each introduced by asher ("which", H0834), progressively narrowing and clarifying the location and contents of the field. The main clause opens with va-yaqom ("and it was confirmed", H6965) followed immediately by sedeh Efron ("field of Ephron", H7704 + proper name), a construct phrase establishing ownership before the transaction. The subsequent clauses locate this field — first ba-Makhpelah ("in Machpelah", H4375), then li-fnei Mamre ("before Mamre", H6440), then restating "the field" (ha-sadeh, H7704) as subject again before adding ha-me'arah ("the cave", H4631) and kol ha-'etz ("all the tree", H6086, used collectively for "trees").

The final clause, asher be-khol-gevulo saviv ("which is in all its border round about", H1366 + H5439), closes the description by specifying that the trees are counted within the total perimeter of the field. The construct chains (sedeh Efron, gevul-o) and the repeated relative particle asher create a legal-style enumeration rather than a narrative flow, listing field, cave, and trees as distinct but connected items under one transaction.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yaqom ("it was confirmed", H6965) with ἔστη ("stood/was established"), matching the sense of legal stability. The Vulgate uses confirmatusque est ("and it was confirmed"), closely matching the Hebrew nuance of a formal transaction. The Hebrew bi-fnei Mamre ("before Mamre", H6440) appears in the LXX as κατὰ πρόσωπον Μαθβρή ("facing Mathbre"), while the Vulgate has respiciens Mambre ("facing/looking toward Mambre") — both preserve the spatial sense of panim ("face", H6440) as "in front of" rather than a literal "face."