Genesis 24:10

Summary

The verse narrates the servant's departure from his master's household: he takes ten camels loaded with his master's goods and travels to Aram Naharaim, to the city of Nahor. The Hebrew marks the journey through a chain of consecutive verbs describing successive actions: taking, going, arising, going again.

Key words

• va-yiqqach ("he took", H3947) — qal narrative form; opens the sequence of main narrative actions.
• 'eved ("servant", H5650) — masculine singular noun with definite article, identifying the subject as "the servant" (Abraham's servant, contextually understood).
• tuv ("good thing of", H2898) — construct singular noun, "the good [things] of," forming a construct chain with 'adonav ("his master").
• yad ("hand", H3027) — singular construct noun with pronominal suffix, literally "in his hand," an idiom for possession or control.
• va-yaqom ("he arose", H6965) — qal narrative form, marking a distinct action of "rising" before the final departure.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of vav-consecutive narrative verbs: va-yiqqach ("and he took"), va-yelekh ("and he went"), va-yaqom ("and he arose"), va-yelekh ("and he went") again. This repetition of yelekh ("he went", H1980) — once right after taking the camels, and again after "he arose" — creates two distinct movements in the Hebrew text, separated by the clause "ve-khol tuv 'adonav be-yado" ("and all the good of his master was in his hand"), which is a nominal clause without its own verb, describing a state (what was in his hand) rather than an additional action.

The phrase kol tuv 'adonav uses tuv (H2898) in construct with 'adonav ("his master", H0113 plural form used honorifically with singular meaning), meaning "all the good [things]" belonging to the master — a general term not specifying the goods further. The expression be-yado ("in his hand", H3027) functions idiomatically to indicate that the servant had these goods under his control or in his possession for the journey.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew presents two occurrences of va-yelekh ("and he went"), separated by the nominal clause about the goods in his hand. The LXX condenses this into a single participial construction, ἀναστὰς ("having risen"), attaching the goods clause (ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἀγαθῶν τοῦ κυρίου αὐτοῦ μεθ' ἑαυτοῦ, "from all the goods of his lord with himself") directly to the initial verb ἔλαβεν ("he took"), rather than treating it as a separate circumstantial clause as the Hebrew does. The Vulgate preserves two movement-verbs (abiit, "he went away"; perrexit, "he continued on") similar to the Hebrew's double yelekh, but likewise attaches the goods (ex omnibus bonis ejus portans secum, "carrying with him from all his goods") to the first departure rather than presenting it as an independent statement about what was in his hand.