Genesis 24:17

Summary

The servant runs to meet the woman (Rebekah, identified earlier in the chapter) and speaks to her, asking her to give him a little water to drink from her jar. The verse combines two narrative actions — running and speaking — followed by direct speech containing a polite request.

Key words

• va-yYarotz ("and he ran", H7323G) — qal narrative form, marking the next sequential action in the story: the servant's movement toward the woman.
• liqraTah ("to meet her", H7122G) — qal infinitive with pronominal suffix -ah ("her", H9034), expressing purpose ("in order to meet her") attached to the running.
• hagmi'iNi ("give me to drink", H1572) — hiphil imperative, causative stem, second person feminine singular, meaning the speaker orders/requests the woman to cause water to reach him (causative sense: "make me drink" rather than simply "drink").
• na' ("please", H4994) — interjection softening the imperative into a polite request.
• me'at-Mayim ("a little of water", H4592 + H4325G) — construct chain: me'at ("a little of") governs mayim ("water"), specifying a small quantity.
• mi-kaDekh ("from your jar", H3537 + H9022) — construct noun kaDe ("jar of") with preposition mi ("from") and second-person feminine suffix, indicating the specific source of the water.

What the text says

The verse opens with two consecutive narrative verbs joined by the vav construction: va-yYarotz ("and he ran") and va-yYomer ("and he said"), both qal forms marking sequential action typical of Hebrew narrative prose. The first action is qualified by the infinitive phrase liqraTah ("to meet her"), which supplies the purpose of the running rather than a separate event.

The direct speech that follows begins with the hiphil imperative hagmi'iNi, built on a causative stem: the servant is not simply saying "drink" but "cause me to drink" / "give me to drink," addressed to a feminine singular subject (the verb form indicates the addressee is a woman). The particle na' attached to the imperative signals politeness, turning a bare command into a request. The object of the request is specified through the construct chain me'at-mayim ("a little of water"), limiting the quantity, and the source is named through the construct mi-kaDekh ("from your jar"), with the second-person feminine suffix confirming that the jar belongs to the woman addressed.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew hiphil imperative hagmi'iNi ("give me to drink") with the Greek imperative Πότισόν με ("give me to drink"), preserving the causative sense. The Vulgate expresses the same idea with præbe... ad bibendum ("give... to drink"), adding an explicit infinitive "to drink" not present as a separate word in the Hebrew verb form, though the causative sense of hagmi'iNi implies it. The Hebrew na' ("please") is rendered in the Vulgate through the general request structure rather than a distinct lexical equivalent, while Spanish versions (RV1909, SBLIBRE) render it explicitly as "por favor" or "ruégote."