Genesis 24:35

Summary

The verse reports the servant's testimony that Yehovah blessed his master (Abraham) abundantly, causing him to grow great, and specifically gave him livestock, precious metals, and slaves. The sentence lists seven categories of possessions in three coordinated pairs plus an initial pair, all governed by a single verb of giving.

Key words

• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — placed immediately before the verb berakh, ahead of the normal verb-first order of Biblical Hebrew narrative, foregrounding the subject.
• berakh ("he has blessed", H1288) — Piel stem (intensive/factitive) perfect; the perfect aspect marks this as a completed state prior to the following narrative chain.
• yigdal ("he has become great", H1431) — Qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), continuing the storyline as a direct consequence of the blessing.
• yitten ("he has given", H5414G) — Qal narrative form, third in the vav-consecutive chain, introducing the list of possessions that follows.
• me'od ("exceedingly", H3966) — modifies the verb berakh, intensifying the degree of blessing.

What the text says

The clause opens with the conjunction va attached directly to the divine name Yehovah, which stands before its verb berakh. This subject-before-verb order departs from the more common verb-initial pattern of Hebrew narrative and places compositional weight on Yehovah as the one performing the action, rather than on the action itself. The verb berakh is in the Piel stem, an intensive binyan, and appears in the perfect aspect, indicating a completed act of blessing that precedes the events that follow. The adverb me'od reinforces the intensity of this blessing.

Following this initial statement, two verbs in narrative form (yigdal, yitten) continue the sequence using vav-consecutive constructions typical of Hebrew storytelling, presenting growth and giving as consequences that follow chronologically from the blessing. The object of yitten is a list of seven nouns arranged in four coordinated pairs: tzon ("sheep", H6629G) and baqar ("cattle", H1241); kesef ("silver", H3701G) and zahav ("gold", H2091); avadim ("male servants", H5650) and shefachot ("female servants", H8198); gemallim ("camels", H1581) and chamorim ("donkeys", H2543). Each pair is joined internally by ve/u ("and"), and the pairs themselves are strung together by the same conjunction, producing a rhythmic enumeration rather than a subordinated or hierarchical list.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text lists the possessions as a flat sequence of paired nouns without subordinating structure. The LXX (Swete edition as given) preserves the same paired order but renders baqar ("cattle") as μόσχους ("calves/young cattle"), a narrower semantic range than the more general Hebrew term. The Vulgate's boves ("oxen/cattle") aligns more closely with the broader sense of baqar. The LXX text as supplied shows a truncated verb form (εὐλό) where a complete form of "blessed" would be expected in the full Septuagint tradition.