Genesis 24:40

Summary

The verse reports Abraham's servant recounting his master's words: Abraham states that Yehovah, before whom he has walked, will send his angel with the servant and make his journey successful, so that a wife may be taken for Abraham's son from his own family and household.

Key words

• hitmalakhti (hit.ha.Lakh.ti, "I have walked about", H1980I) — hithpael perfect, first person. The hithpael stem gives a reflexive/iterative nuance ("walked about, conducted myself"), and the perfect marks completed action prior to the statement, describing an ongoing relationship up to the present.
• yishlach (yish.Lach, "he will send", H7971G) — qal imperfect, third person. The imperfect here expresses future or expected action: the sending of the angel is projected forward, not yet accomplished.
• hitzliach (hitz.Li.ach, "he will make successful", H6743B) — hiphil sequential perfect (vav-consecutive). The hiphil is causative ("cause to succeed"), and its position after the narrative vav links it directly to yishlach, continuing the same future sequence despite being morphologically a perfect form.
• laqachta (la.kach.Ta, "you will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect, second person. Like hitzliach, this perfect continues the chain of future actions begun by the imperfect yishlach, describing what will follow once the journey succeeds.
• mimishpachti (mish.pach.T + suffix i, "from my family", H4940) — feminine singular construct noun with first-person suffix, paired with mibbeit avi ("from the house of my father", H1004M/H0001G), specifying the source from which the wife is to be taken.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of verbs linked by the narrative vav, a common structure in Biblical Hebrew for reporting sequences of future or intended events. The chain begins with yishlach in the qal imperfect ("he will send"), establishing the tense for the whole sequence. The following verbs, hitzliach ("he will make successful") and laqachta ("you will take"), are grammatically perfect forms but function as continuations of the imperfect's future sense because of the connecting vav — a construction sometimes called the "waw-consecutive" or sequential perfect. This means the three actions (sending the angel, making the journey succeed, taking a wife) are presented as one continuous, forward-moving sequence rather than as separate independent statements.

The phrase asher hitmalakti lefanav ("whom I have walked before him") uses the hithpael stem of halakh, which frames Abraham's conduct as an ongoing, reflexive activity ("walking about" or "conducting oneself") rather than a simple single act of walking. The construct chains mimishpachti ("from my family") and mibbeit avi ("from the house of my father") both use the first-person suffix, tying the specification of origin directly to the speaker (Abraham) rather than to the servant.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Yehovah (H3068G) as "Κύριος ὁ θεός" (Lord God), adding a term not present in the Hebrew, which has only the divine name. The LXX also translates hitmalakti lefanav ("I have walked before him") with εὐηρέστησα ("I was well-pleasing"), a different verbal image than the Hebrew's "walking." The Vulgate's "in cujus conspectu ambulo" ("in whose sight I walk") uses a present tense, differing from the Hebrew perfect hitmalakti, which indicates a completed or ongoing-until-now action rather than a present continuous one.