Genesis 23:5

Summary

The verse reports that the Hittites (literally "the sons of Heth") responded to Abraham. The Hebrew text marks Abraham twice as the recipient of this speech — once through the object marker before his name, and again through a pronominal suffix at the end of the verse — a doubling that the ancient versions do not fully reproduce.

Key words

• va'ya'anu ("and they answered", H6030B) — qal narrative verb, plural, continuing the story sequence from the preceding verses.
• bene ("sons/people of", H1121G) — construct plural noun; combined with Chet it forms the fixed expression "sons of Heth," designating the group as a collective people rather than individuals.
• 'et (H0853) — direct object marker placed before Abraham; here it introduces the addressee of the verb "answered," a construction some qal speech-verbs allow even though "answer" typically implies a response directed to someone.
• le'mor ("saying", H0559) — infinitive construct with the preposition le, standard formula introducing direct speech.
• lo ("to/for him", H9033) — pronominal suffix attached to the preposition, referring back to Abraham a second time.

What the text says

The sentence structure is: [verb] va'ya'anu + [subject] bene-Chet + [object marker + Abraham] + [infinitive] le'mor + [preposition + suffix] lo. The subject "sons of Heth" follows the verb, typical of Hebrew narrative word order (verb-subject). Abraham appears twice as the target of the speech: first as the object of "answered" marked by 'et, and second through the suffix -o ("him") attached to the preposition before the quoted speech formula le'mor...lo, which could be rendered literally as "saying to him." This repetition is a feature of the Hebrew syntax where the addressee is stated once with the main verb and then restated with the introductory speech-verb, producing a construction that reads as "they answered Abraham, saying to him."

Differences between versions

The LXX (πρὸς Ἀβραάμ... λέγοντες, "to Abraham... saying") and the Vulgate (filii Heth, dicentes, "the sons of Heth, saying") each name Abraham or the speech act only once, without a separate pronoun equivalent to Hebrew lo ("to him"). The Hebrew's double reference to Abraham (object marker plus suffix) is not preserved as a doubling in either version. Among the modern translations given, RV1909 keeps a trace of this repetition with "respondieron... á Abraham, y dijéronle" (two verbs, two references), while SBLIBRE collapses it into a single clause, "los hititas le respondieron a Abraham," matching the LXX/Vulgate pattern more closely than the Hebrew's twofold structure.