Genesis 23:3

Summary

Genesis 23:3 describes Abraham rising from beside his deceased (relative) and then addressing the sons of Heth. The verse marks the transition from mourning to a formal negotiation, introduced through direct speech that follows.

Key words

• iYakom ("he arose", H6965B) — qal narrative form (wayyiqtol), indicating the next sequential action in the story: Abraham's rising.
• pe.Nei ("face of", H6440G) — masculine plural construct noun, forming part of the idiom me'al pnei ("from upon the face of"), used here to mean "from before" or "away from the presence of."
• me.T ("dead", H4191) — qal participle, masculine singular construct, functioning as a noun ("the one who died") rather than a finite verb; it takes the following pronominal suffix.
• o ("his", H9023) — pronominal suffix attached to met, producing meto, "his dead (one)," without specifying relationship or gender of relation beyond what the participle itself carries.
• y.da.Ber ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form, an intensive stem of the root for speaking, contrasted with the simpler qal verbs used elsewhere in the verse.

What the text says

The verse opens with two wayyiqtol (narrative) verbs joined by the vav consecutive: va-yYakom ("and he arose") and va-yedaBer ("and he spoke"), which sequentially advance the narrative — first Abraham's physical action, then his speech. The phrase me'al pnei meto is a construct chain built on the participle met ("dead" or "the one who died"), which here operates as a substantive with a possessive suffix, "his dead (one)." The Hebrew participle does not specify the sex or relationship of the deceased explicitly within this clause; that identification depends on the wider context of the chapter (verses 1–2), where the death being mourned is already named.

The verb yedaBer is in the piel stem, an intensive form of the root for speaking, distinguishing it from the qal form of "to say" ('amor, H0559) used later in the infinitive le'mor ("saying"), which introduces the direct discourse that follows. This distinction — piel "spoke" followed by qal infinitive "saying" — is a common Hebrew narrative pattern for introducing quoted speech, though it is not always visible in translation.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders me'al pnei meto as ab officio funeris ("from the duty of the funeral"), an interpretive rendering rather than a literal translation of "from before his dead." The LXX gives apo tou nekrou autou ("from his dead one"), closer to the Hebrew construct structure. The LXX also repeats the subject, "καὶ εἶπεν Ἀβραάμ" ("and Abraham said"), where the Hebrew has only the third-person verb yedaber without restating the name. Modern translations such as BSB and SBLIBRE add "wife" or "body," specifying the identity of the deceased, which the Hebrew participle meto itself does not lexically state.