Genesis 24:6

Summary

Abraham responds to his servant with a direct warning: he must be careful never to bring Abraham's son back to the land from which Abraham himself departed. The sentence is built as a command followed by a negative purpose clause specifying exactly what must be avoided.

Key words

• hiShamer ("take heed", H8104J) — niphal imperative. The niphal stem here functions reflexively, giving the sense "guard yourself," reinforced by the following dative pronoun.
• lekha ("to yourself", H9005+H9031) — preposition with 2nd person masculine suffix, attached to the imperative to intensify the reflexive nuance: "watch yourself" rather than a general warning.
• pen ("lest", H6435) — subordinating particle introducing a negative purpose/result clause; it sets up the specific danger the imperative warns against.
• tashiv ("you should take back", H7725G) — hiphil imperfect, causative of the root meaning "to return." The hiphil turns an intransitive sense ("return") into a transitive one ("cause to return / bring back"), making the servant the causer of the son's movement.
• shammah ("there", H8033G + H9011) — adverb with directional he suffix, marking motion toward that place rather than static location.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), a standard formula introducing direct speech, followed by el ("to", H0413) with a 3rd person suffix pointing back to the servant addressed, and the subject Avraham (H0085) placed after the verb, typical of Hebrew narrative word order. The core of Abraham's speech is a single imperative-plus-purpose-clause construction: hiShamer lekha functions as an intensified command, "guard yourself," and pen tashiv ("lest you take back") introduces the specific outcome to be prevented. The hiphil form of tashiv is significant grammatically: it does not simply mean "he/she returns" but "you cause to return," placing the responsibility for the son's movement directly on the addressed servant. The object et-beni ("my son", H1121A with 1st person suffix) uses the construct form ben with the direct object marker et, marking the son as the object being acted upon. Finally, shammah uses the directional he ending, which in Biblical Hebrew grammar marks motion toward a location, distinguishing it from a simple locative adverb.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hiShamer lekha as Prósече seautō ("pay attention to yourself"), preserving the reflexive force but using an imperative in a different verbal aspect than the Hebrew niphal. The Vulgate's Cave nequando reducas ("beware lest at any time you bring back") expands pen with "nequando" ("lest ever"), adding a temporal nuance not explicit in the single Hebrew particle pen. All three textual traditions agree on the core prohibition regarding returning the son to the place in question.