Genesis 24:45

Summary

The servant of Abraham recounts that before he had finished speaking silently in his own mind, Rebekah appeared, coming out with her jar on her shoulder; she went down to the spring, drew water, and he then asked her for a drink. The verse marks the immediate fulfillment of a request he had just made internally.

Key words

• terem ("not yet", H2962) — placed before the verb, it frames the entire following clause as occurring prior to completion of an action, creating the "before I had even finished" sense.
• 'akhalleh ("I had finished", H3615G) — Piel imperfect, an intensive form of completion; combined with terem it expresses an action interrupted or overtaken by what follows.
• libbi ("my heart", H3820A + H9020) — construct noun with 1st-person suffix; here "heart" denotes the inner faculty of thought, so ledabber 'el libbi means "to speak to/within my heart," i.e., silent inner speech.
• yotze't ("coming out", H3318G) — Qal participle, feminine singular; participles depict ongoing or simultaneous action, portraying Rebekah in the act of emerging just as the servant's inner speech occurs.
• hashqini ("give me a drink", H8248H) — Hiphil imperative with 1st-person suffix; a causative command form ("cause me to drink"), reused from the servant's earlier prayer, showing the request is repeated verbatim.

What the text says

The clause opens with 'ani terem 'akhalleh ledabber 'el libbi, literally "I, not yet had I finished speaking to my heart." The pronoun 'ani ("I", H0589) is placed first for emphasis, and the verb 'akhalleh is a Piel imperfect denoting completion of an action, negated in time by terem. The infinitive ledabber ("to speak") depends on it, and 'el libbi ("to my heart") specifies that the speaking was internal, not audible. This construction sets up a temporal frame: everything that follows happens within or immediately after this unfinished inner act.

The narrative then shifts into a chain of Qal verbs joined by the narrative vav (va-): tered ("she went down", H3381), tishav ("she drew water", H7579), and 'omar ("I said", H0559), each marking sequential past action. Before this chain, however, hinneh ("there!", H2009) introduces Rebekah's appearance with dramatic immediacy, followed by the participle yotze't ("coming out", H3318G), which grammatically freezes the moment as simultaneous with the servant's still-unfinished inner speech. The final imperative hashqini na' ("give me a drink, please", H8248H + H4994) repeats the same causative verb form used earlier in the story, marking this request as a direct citation of the servant's prior words.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders terem as pro tou syntelesai ("before finishing"), matching the Hebrew temporal structure, but translates libbi ("my heart") as en tē dianoia mou ("in my mind"), shifting the organ of thought from "heart" to "mind/intellect." The Vulgate similarly uses tacitus mecum volverem ("I was turning over silently within myself"), an interpretive expansion not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew, which more simply states "speaking to my heart."