Genesis 24:16

Summary

The verse describes the young woman (Rebekah, introduced in the preceding verses) through a series of physical and moral qualifications, then narrates her actions: she goes down to the spring, fills her jar, and comes back up.

Key words

• na'arah ("young woman", H5291) — feminine singular noun, the subject of the whole description.
• tovat ("good of", H2896A) — feminine singular adjective in construct form, linking directly to mar'eh, producing the sense "good of appearance."
• mar'eh ("appearance", H4758) — masculine singular noun, the quality specified by the construct adjective.
• betulah ("virgin", H1330) — feminine singular noun, a second, separate qualification added after "very good of appearance."
• yeda'ah ("he had known her", H3045 + H9034) — qal perfect verb with pronominal suffix, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), indicating a completed state of non-relation.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a nominal, non-verbal description before switching to narrative verbs. The construct phrase tovat mar'eh ("good of appearance") uses the adjective tovat (H2896A) in construct state directly governing the noun mar'eh (H4758), a common Hebrew way to attribute a quality without a linking verb — literally "good of appearance," rendered idiomatically as "of good/beautiful appearance." This is intensified by me'od ("exceedingly", H3966). Separately, the noun betulah (H1330) reasserts virginity, followed by the negated statement ve'ish lo' yeda'ah — "and a man had not known her" — using the qal perfect of yada' (H3045) with the third-person feminine singular suffix -ah (H9034) attached directly to the verb, meaning "known her." This construction pairs two distinct terms, na'arah and betulah, with the negated yada' clause, producing a layered description rather than a single term for virginity.

The narrative then shifts to a chain of three consecutive qal/piel verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001): tered ("she went down", H3381), temalle' ("she filled", H4390, piel), and ta'al ("she came up", H5927G). This vav-consecutive chain marks sequential action, each verb attached to the next event without additional connectors, a typical feature of Biblical Hebrew narrative style. The directional suffix -ah on ha'aynah ("towards the spring", H5869M + H9011) indicates movement toward the spring, a nuance not always rendered explicitly in translation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew's twofold description (na'arah... betulah) with two separate uses of παρθένος ("virgin"), stating "she was a virgin" twice, where the Hebrew uses two different words, na'arah (H5291, "young woman") and betulah (H1330, "virgin"). The Vulgate similarly uses "virgo" and "puella" as two terms, paralleling the Hebrew's two-term structure differently. The Vulgate adds "autem" and past-perfect verb forms ("descenderat," "impleverat," "revertebatur"), presenting the actions as background narration rather than the sequential vav-consecutive chain seen in the Hebrew.