Genesis 24:1

Summary

The verse opens the account of Abraham's old age, stating in Hebrew through two verbal clauses that Abraham was old and "had come into the days" (an idiom for advanced age), and that Yehovah had blessed him bakol ("in the all/everything", H3605).

Key words

• zaken ("he was old", H2204) — qal perfect verb, a completed state, not merely an adjective.
• ba ("he had come", H0935J) — qal perfect verb; paired with ba-yamim ("in the days", H9003+H3117I) it forms the idiom "advanced in days."
• berakh ("he had blessed", H1288) — piel (intensive) perfect, marking a completed and emphasized action attributed to YHWH (H3068G).
• bakol ("in the all", H9003+H3605) — preposition plus definite article attached to kol ("everything", H3605), giving a bounded, totalizing sense rather than an indefinite "in some things."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two independent clauses joined by the conjunction ve- ("and", H9002). The first clause uses two verbs in sequence — zaken ("he was old") and ba ("he had come") — both in the qal perfect, describing Abraham through completed verbal action rather than a static adjective alone. The phrase ba bayamim ("came in the days") functions idiomatically to express advanced age, using motion language (arriving, entering) applied metaphorically to time.

The second clause shifts subject to YHWH, using the piel stem of barakh ("bless", H1288). The piel stem in Biblical Hebrew often carries an intensive or completed nuance compared to the simpler qal, so the grammar here presents the blessing as a thorough, accomplished act rather than an ongoing process. The object is marked by 'et (H0853), the untranslated direct object marker, followed by "Abraham" (H0085). The final phrase bakol combines the preposition "in" with the definite article and the noun kol ("everything", H3605), producing "in the all" — a construction that groups the totality of what Abraham possesses or experiences as a single defined category, rather than listing indefinite instances.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew verbs (zaken, "he was old"; ba, "he had come") as two participial/adjectival forms, πρεσβύτερος ("elder") and προβεβηκὼς ἡμερῶν ("advanced in days"), converting the Hebrew's verbal sequence into a descriptive phrase. The Vulgate similarly uses nominal/adjectival phrasing, "senex, dierumque multorum" ("an old man, and of many days"), rather than preserving two finite verbs. Both LXX (κατὰ πάντα) and Vulgate (in cunctis) render bakol as "according to all things" or "in all things," matching the Hebrew's totalizing sense of the definite article on kol.