Genesis 24:65

Summary

Rebekah asks the servant about the identity of the man walking in the field toward them; the servant identifies him as "my master" (Isaac); Rebekah then takes her veil and covers herself. The verse combines a dialogue exchange with a narrated action, all linked by consecutive narrative verb forms.

Key words

• ha.la.Zeh ("this", H1976) — demonstrative particle attached to ha'ish ("the man"), giving a pointing sense ("this man there") rather than a plain "this."
• ho.Lekh ("is walking", H1980I) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the man's action as ongoing/continuous ("the one who is walking"), not a completed act.
• k.ra.Te.nu ("to meet us", H7122G + H9035) — qal infinitive with pronominal suffix "us," expressing purpose ("in order to meet us").
• 'a.do.N-i ("my master", H0113 + H9020) — construct noun with 1st-person suffix, identifying the man's relationship to the speaker (the servant refers to Isaac as his master).
• tit.Kas ("she covered herself", H3680) — hithpael narrative form, reflexive voice: the subject (Rebekah) performs the covering action upon herself.

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on the narrative vav chain (va-, H9001), which links five successive actions: she said, he said, she took, she covered herself — plus the embedded question. This chain structure marks the sequence as a continuous flow of events rather than isolated statements, typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative prose.

Rebekah's question uses the interrogative mi ("who?", H4310) together with the definite article twice (ha-'ish, "the man"; ha-holekh, "the one walking") and the demonstrative ha.la.Zeh ("this," H1976), producing a phrase that isolates and points to a specific individual: "who is this man, the one walking in the field to meet us?" The participle ho.Lekh (H1980I) presents the man's approach as an action in progress at the moment of speech, a nuance that participles convey but that finite past-tense translations ("who is that man... coming") do not fully preserve.

The servant's answer, hu' 'adoni ("he [is] my master"), uses the personal pronoun hu' (H1931) as a copula-like subject before the construct noun 'adoni (H0113 + H9020, "my master"), a simple nominal sentence without a verb "to be," which is standard in Hebrew for identity statements.

The final action, tit.Kas (H3680), is in the hithpael stem, marking the verb as reflexive: the subject acts upon herself, distinct from a simple qal "she covered [something]."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ho.Lekh ("the one walking", H1980I) with the Greek participle ho poreuomenos ("the one going/proceeding"), matching the Hebrew's participial, ongoing sense. The Vulgate instead uses qui venit ("who comes"), a finite verb form, which shifts the continuous nuance of the Hebrew participle into a completed/simple action. The Vulgate also adds cito ("quickly") before "took the veil," a word with no counterpart among the Hebrew words listed for tit.Kas or tza.'If.