Genesis 24:56

Summary

The servant responds to the request that he delay his departure, asking not to be held back since Yehovah has made his journey successful. He requests to be sent off so that he may return to his master.

Key words

• te'achaRu ("you delay", H0309) — piel jussive, second person plural; the piel stem intensifies the verb, and the jussive form following the negation 'al ("may not", H0408) expresses a prohibition softer than a direct command, closer to "please do not delay."
• hitzLiach ("he has made successful", H6743B) — hiphil perfect, third person masculine singular; the hiphil (causative) stem indicates Yehovah as the active cause of the success, and the perfect aspect marks the action as already completed.
• darKi ("my journey", H1870L) — noun in construct form with first-person suffix, literally "journey of me," tying the success directly to the servant's own travel.
• shale'Chu ("send away", H7971G) — piel imperative, second person masculine plural; the piel stem again intensifies the sending, and the imperative marks a direct request/command to the listeners.
• 'eleKhah ("let me go", H1980G) — qal form expressing purpose/result following the imperative, "so that I may go," linking the sending to the servant's intended departure.

What the text says

The verse is built as a short speech with three linked clauses. First, the servant issues a prohibition: 'al-te'achaRu ("may not you-delay") plus the object marker and suffix 'otI ("me"), forming "do not delay me." This is followed by a causal clause introduced by the conjunction va ("and", H9002) attached to YHWH: "and Yehovah has-made-successful my-journey" — the hiphil perfect hitzLiach frames Yehovah's action as completed background information that grounds the request. The clause functions almost as a reason clause even though no explicit subordinating word for "because" appears in the Hebrew; the grammatical link is carried simply by word order and the conjunction.

The final section contains two imperative-type forms in sequence: shale'Chuni ("send-me-away") and ve'eleKhah ("so-let-me-go"). The construct chain la'adoNi ("to-master-of-me") closes the verse, identifying the destination of the requested departure as "my master," using the construct noun 'adoN ("master", H0113) with the first-person suffix. The double imperative-plus-purpose structure gives the sentence a paratactic, oral quality: command, then intended result, without subordinating conjunctions in Hebrew beyond the simple ve ("and/so").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders te'achaRu ("you delay") with κατέχετέ ("hold back/detain"), a lexical choice emphasizing restraint rather than temporal delay. The Vulgate's retinere ("to hold back") matches this same sense of detention rather than delay. Where the Hebrew text simply juxtaposes clauses with va ("and"), the Vulgate inserts quia ("because"), making explicit a causal relationship that the Hebrew leaves implicit through word order alone.