Genesis 25:8

Summary

Genesis 25:8 narrates the death of Abraham in a chain of four verbs: he expired, he died, and he was gathered to his people, framed by a description of his old age as "good," "satisfied," and advanced. The verse closes the narrative of Abraham's life with formulaic language marking both physical death and a distinct fate described by the verb "gathered."

Key words

• yigva' ("he expired", H1478) — qal narrative verb, the first in the death-sequence, denoting the cessation of breath/life.
• yamot ("he died", H4191) — qal narrative verb following immediately after yigva'; the doubling of near-synonymous verbs intensifies the description of the event rather than adding new information.
• sevah ("old age", H7872) paired with tovah ("good", H2896A) — a feminine noun with feminine adjective, forming the phrase "in good old age," qualifying the manner of Abraham's life-end.
• save'a ("satisfied", H7649) — masculine singular adjective joined by the conjunction ve to zaqen ("old", H2205H), together describing Abraham's state at death.
• yeasef ("he was gathered", H0622) — niphal (passive) narrative verb; the passive voice leaves the agent of the "gathering" unstated, distinguishing this clause grammatically from the two active death-verbs before it.

What the text says

The verse is built on three narrative verbs connected by the vav consecutive (va, H9001), which in Biblical Hebrew signals sequential action: "and he expired," "and he died," "and he was gathered." The first two verbs, yigva' and yamot, are both qal (active) forms describing the same event of dying from two angles — one focused on the cessation of breath, the other on death as a general fact. The third verb, yeasef, shifts to the niphal stem, a passive/reflexive form, marking a grammatically distinct action: Abraham "was gathered" to his ammav ("his kinspeople," H5971B), a plural construct noun with a possessive suffix. This passive construction has no stated subject performing the gathering, a feature the active verbs preceding it do not share.

Between the death-verbs and the gathering-verb, the text inserts a descriptive clause without its own verb: be-sevah tovah, zaqen ve-save'a — "in good old age, old and satisfied." This nominal/adjectival string qualifies the circumstances of death rather than narrating additional events.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds πλήρης ἡμερῶν ("full of days"), and the Vulgate similarly reads plenus dierum ("full of days"), a phrase not present in the Hebrew of this verse, which reads only zaqen ve-save'a ("old and satisfied") without any word corresponding to "days." Additionally, the Hebrew ammav is a plural construct noun ("his peoples/kinspeople"), while both the LXX (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ) and the Vulgate (populum suum) render it with a singular noun ("his people").