Genesis 24:38
אִם־לֹא אֶל־בֵּית־אָבִי תֵּלֵךְ וְאֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתִּי וְלָקַחְתָּ אִשָּׁה לִבְנִֽי׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
אִם־לֹ֧א אֶל־בֵּית־אָבִ֛י תֵּלֵ֖ךְ וְאֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתִּ֑י וְלָקַחְתָּ֥ אִשָּׁ֖ה לִבְנִֽי׃
ἀλλ᾿ ἢ εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός μου πορεύσῃ καὶ εἰς τὴν φυλήν μου, καὶ λήμψῃ γυναῖκα τῷ υἱῷ μου ἐκεῖθεν.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
sed ad domum patris mei perges, et de cognatione mea accipies uxorem filio meo.
Tienes que ir a la casa de mi padre y a mi propia familia, y de allí buscarás una esposa para mi hijo’.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Sino que irás á la casa de mi padre, y á mi parentela, y tomarás mujer para mi hijo.
but you shall go to my father ’s house and to my kindred to take a wife for my son.’
✦ What the text says
Summary
This verse records the condition Abraham imposed on his servant regarding the oath about finding a wife for his son: the servant must go instead to Abraham's father's house and family. The verse is framed as a negative oath-condition ("if not... then...") reported in direct speech by the servant.
Key words
- 'im ("if", H0518I) — introduces a conditional/oath clause; in Hebrew oath formulas, "if not X" functions as an emphatic assertion that X must happen.
- lo' ("not", H3808) — negates the implied alternative, working together with 'im to form the oath-negation structure typical of Hebrew swearing formulas.
- teLekh ("you will go", H1980G) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine, expressing the required future action tied to the conditional oath.
- ve.laqachTa ("and you will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the chain of required actions after teLekh; this verb form shows narrative/logical continuation rather than a simple future.
- mishpachTi ("my family", H4940) — feminine singular construct noun with 1st person suffix, naming the second required destination alongside "my father's house."
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence opens with the compound particle 'im... lo' ("if... not"), a construction used in oath contexts to express a strong obligation: the servant must go "to the house of my father" (beit-'avi) and "to my family" (mishpachti). The verb teLekh ("you will go") is qal imperfect, marking the action as required in the servant's future. This is followed by ve.laqachTa ("and you will take"), a sequential perfect connected by the narrative vav, which continues the sequence of obligated actions: after going to the family, the servant is to take (laqach, H3947G) "a wife" ('ishah) "for my son" (li-veni, using the construct noun ben with 1st person suffix).
The grammatical structure — conditional negation followed by two verbs in sequence (imperfect then sequential perfect) — presents the servant's obligations as a single continuous action: going and then taking a wife. The construct chains beit-'avi ("house of my father") and mishpachti ("my family") both carry the 1st person suffix, marking these as Abraham's own household and kin, distinguishing them from the local Canaanite population implied by the negative oath condition.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders מִשְׁפַּחְתִּי (mishpachti, "my family", H4940) as φυλήν μου ("my tribe/clan"), a broader term than the Hebrew's specific familial noun. The LXX also adds ἐκεῖθεν ("from there") at the end, a phrase not present in the Hebrew text, making explicit that the wife is to be taken "from there" (i.e., from the father's house/family). The Vulgate's "de cognatione mea" ("from my kindred") parallels the Hebrew mishpachti more closely in sense than the LXX's φυλήν.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.