Genesis 24:41
אָז תִּנָּקֶה מֵאָלָתִי כִּי תָבוֹא אֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתִּי וְאִם־לֹא יִתְּנוּ לָךְ וְהָיִיתָ נָקִי מֵאָלָתִֽי׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
אָ֤ז תִּנָּקֶה֙ מֵאָ֣לָתִ֔י כִּ֥י תָב֖וֹא אֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתִּ֑י וְאִם־לֹ֤א יִתְּנוּ֙ לָ֔ךְ וְהָיִ֥יתָ נָקִ֖י מֵאָלָתִֽי׃
τότε ἀθῷος ἴσῃ ἐκ τῆς ἀρᾶς μου· ἡνίκα γὰρ ἐὰν ἔλθῃς εἰς τὴν φυλήν μου καὶ μὴ δῶσίν σοι, καὶ ἴσῃ ἀθῷος ἀπὸ τοῦ ὁρκισμοῦ μου.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Innocens eris a maledictione mea, cum veneris ad propinquos meos, et non dederint tibi.
Sólo quedarás libre del juramento que me has hecho si llegas a mi familia y ellos no te la quieren dar. En ese caso, quedarás libre de mi juramento’.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Entonces serás libre de mi juramento, cuando hubieres llegado á mi linaje; y si no te la dieren, serás libre de mi juramento.
And when you go to my kindred, if they refuse to give her to you, then you will be released from my oath.’
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse states the servant's oath-release clause: he will be cleared of his oath if he goes to the family and they refuse to give the woman. The Hebrew frames this as a conditional structure bracketed by two formulations of the same release, one at the start and one at the end.
Key words
- tinnaqeh ("you will be free", H5352) — niphal imperfect, a passive/reflexive form: the subject undergoes the action of being cleared, rather than performing it.
- 'alati ("my oath", H0423) — feminine singular noun in construct with the first-person suffix -i ("my"); appears twice, framing the verse.
- tavo' ("you will go", H0935G) — qal imperfect, introduced by ki ("for/if"), setting the first condition (arrival at the family).
- yitnu ("they will give", H5414G) — qal imperfect, third person plural, negated by lo' ("not"), setting the second condition (refusal to give).
- hayita naqi ("you will be free", H1961 + H5355A) — sequential perfect of "to be" plus the adjective naqi ("free/clear"), a different grammatical construction from tinnaqeh though referring to the same release.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence opens with az ("then") followed by tinnaqeh me'alati — a niphal verb meaning the addressee will be released or cleared "from my oath." Two conditions follow, introduced by ki ("for/when") and v'im ("and if"): first that he arrives at the family (tavo' 'el mishpachti), second that they refuse to give her (lo' yitnu lakh). The sentence then closes with a second release formula, v'hayita naqi me'alati, using the sequential perfect of hayah ("to be") plus the adjective naqi ("free"), rather than repeating the niphal verb tinnaqeh used at the start. The same result — release from the oath — is thus expressed twice, but with two different grammatical constructions (a niphal verb form, then a perfect-plus-adjective construction), a variation that Hebrew style permits but which flattens into identical phrasing in most translations.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the two occurrences of 'alati with two different Greek nouns: ἀρᾶς ("curse") in the first instance and ὁρκισμοῦ ("oath-taking") in the second, where the Hebrew uses the same word 'alati both times. The Vulgate gives only a single declaration, "Innocens eris a maledictione mea," and does not repeat the release clause at the end of the verse the way the Hebrew's v'hayita naqi me'alati does, compressing the two Hebrew formulations into one.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.