Genesis 24:9

Summary

The verse narrates a ritual gesture and oath: the servant places his hand under Abraham's thigh and swears to him concerning "this matter." This is the physical enactment of a solemn promise, the mechanism through which the oath commanded in the previous verses is formally sealed.

Key words

• 'E.ved ("servant", H5650) — definite noun (with the article ha-), identifying the subject as "the servant" already known from context.
• yad ("hand", H3027X) — construct form, meaning "hand of," here bound to the following pronominal suffix "his."
• yerekh ("thigh of", H3409) — feminine singular construct, linking directly to "Abraham," forming the phrase "thigh of Abraham."
• 'adoNai ("master", H0113) — masculine plural construct with suffix, literally "his masters," though it refers to the single figure of Abraham.
• yiSHava' ("he swore an oath", H7650) — niphal stem verb; grammatically a passive/reflexive binyan, but here functioning as the standard active-meaning verb "to swear."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of possessive (construct) relationships: yad-o ("his hand") is placed tachat ("under," itself a construct noun) yerekh 'Avraham 'adonav — literally "the thigh of Abraham, his master(s)." This stacking of construct nouns (hand-of / under-of / thigh-of) is a common feature of Biblical Hebrew narrative prose and creates a tightly bound phrase without any conjunctions, unlike the more analytic prepositional phrasing of English or Spanish translations.

The word 'adonav is notable: it appears in the plural form ("masters") though it refers grammatically to one person, Abraham. This plural-for-singular pattern with terms of address or authority (compare 'Elohim, "God," also plural in form) is a recognized feature of Hebrew honorific or intensive plurals, though the text itself gives no explicit signal beyond the morphology that this is anything other than a normal reference to Abraham as sole master.

The verb yiSHava' is in the niphal stem, which typically marks passive or reflexive action. For this particular root (Strong H7650), the niphal is nonetheless the form regularly used to express the active sense "to swear an oath" — the grammar does not indicate that the servant was "made to swear" by another agent, but rather that swearing itself is idiomatically expressed through this stem in Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew 'adonav ("his masters," plural construct) is rendered as singular in both the LXX (τοῦ κυρίου αὐτοῦ, "of his lord") and the Vulgate (domini sui, "of his master"), neither preserving the plural morphology of the Hebrew.

The Hebrew daVar ("matter", H1697I) is translated straightforwardly as "matter" (BSB) or "negocio" (RV1909), but the SBLIBRE version expands it to "este encargo" ("this task/errand" — implying "to fulfill this task"), an interpretive addition not present in the Hebrew, which simply states that the servant swore "concerning this matter," without specifying fulfillment.