Genesis 24:18

Summary

The verse narrates the woman's (Rebekah's) response to the servant's request for water: she invites him to drink, then quickly lowers her jar and gives him water. The Hebrew presents a rapid sequence of four consecutive verbal actions.

Key words

• va-Tomer ("and she said", H0559) — qal narrative form; the vav-consecutive marks this as the next event in the sequence, opening her direct speech.
• she.Teh ("drink", H8354) — qal imperative, masculine singular; a direct command addressed to the man, not a mere offer.
• te.ma.Her ("she hurried", H4116A) — piel narrative; the piel stem intensifies the action, marking speed as notable rather than incidental.
• To.red ("she put down/lowered", H3381) — hiphil narrative; the causative stem indicates she caused the jar to descend, i.e., an active lowering rather than a passive falling.
• tash.Ke.hu ("she gave him drink", H8248H + H9033) — hiphil narrative with 3ms suffix "him"; causative form meaning she caused him to drink, with the object built directly into the verb form.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-Tomer, te.ma.Her, To.red, tash.Ke.hu — each marking a sequential step in the action: she said, she hurried, she lowered, she gave-to-drink. This chain structure in Hebrew narrative syntax presents the events as a tight, uninterrupted sequence rather than as separate or simultaneous occurrences.

The direct speech itself is minimal: the imperative she.Teh ("drink") followed by the vocative 'a.do.N-i ("my lord"), a construct noun with a first-person suffix. No elaboration is given beyond the command and address.

The three verbs describing her physical actions use different stems that shape the nuance: te.ma.Her is piel, intensifying the notion of haste; To.red and tash.Ke.hu are both hiphil, a causative stem indicating that she actively caused the jar to go down and caused him to drink — she is grammatically the agent producing both results, not simply performing incidental motions. The final verb tash.Ke.hu carries the pronominal suffix -hu ("him") directly attached, so the object of her action is built into the verb form itself rather than expressed as a separate word.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-Tomer ("she said") as ἡ δὲ εἶπεν, matching the Hebrew's narrative structure. Notably, the LXX adds a temporal clause absent from the Hebrew and the Vulgate: ἕως ἐπαύσατο πίνων ("until he stopped drinking"), an addition not present in the Hebrew tash.Ke.hu or in the Vulgate's dedit ei potum ("she gave him drink"). The Hebrew yad ("hand", H3027G) is rendered by the LXX as βραχίονα ("arm"), while the Vulgate uses ulnam ("forearm/arm"), both differing slightly from the more general Hebrew term for "hand."