Genesis 26:11

Summary

Abimelech issues a command to his entire people, establishing a legal prohibition: anyone who touches Isaac or his wife Rebekah will certainly be put to death. The verse functions as royal decree protecting the couple after Abimelech has learned of their true relationship.

Key words

• y.Tzav ("he commanded", H6680) — piel verb, narrative form; indicates an intensive, authoritative act of command by the king.
• ha.no.Ge.a' ("the one who touches", H5060) — qal participle with definite article, functioning as a generic subject ("whoever touches"), describing an ongoing or potential class of persons rather than one specific individual.
• ba.'Ish ha.Zeh ("in the man, this", H0376G + H2088) — noun with preposition and demonstrative, specifying the exact person protected ("this man" = Isaac).
• Mot yu.Mat ("certainly / he will be put to death", H4191 + H4191) — infinitive absolute followed by hophal imperfect of the same root; the doubling intensifies certainty, and the hophal marks the action as passive and causative ("will be caused to die").
• le.Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct, introducing the direct speech that follows the command verb.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative va-yiqtol pattern typical of Hebrew storytelling: va-y.Tzav ("and he commanded") moves the plot forward with Abimelech as subject, acting upon kol ha-'Am ("all the people", H3605 + H5971A), the direct object marked by 'et. The content of the command is introduced by the infinitive le.Mor ("saying"), which opens a quoted decree rather than reported speech.

Within the quoted decree, the participle ha.no.Ge.a' ("the one who touches") functions as a legal-style relative clause, common in casuistic law formulations: "the one who touches... in the man, this, and in his wife." The construct phrase 'ish.To ("his wife", H0802H + suffix) ties Rebekah's protection directly to Isaac through the possessive suffix. The penalty clause uses the infinitive absolute Mot reinforcing the finite hophal verb yu.Mat — a construction that in Biblical Hebrew legal and narrative texts emphasizes certainty or inevitability of the stated consequence, here death. The hophal stem itself marks the verb as passive and causative: the subject does not die by his own action but "is caused to be put to death," implying an external agent (state authority) executing the penalty.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders kol ha-'Am ("all the people") as παντὶ τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ ("all his people"), adding a possessive pronoun (αὐτοῦ) not present in the Hebrew. The LXX also renders the penalty clause as θανάτου ἔνοχος ἔσται ("will be liable to death"), a legal-liability phrasing differing from the Hebrew's doubled infinitive-plus-finite-verb construction "Mot yu.Mat." The Vulgate (VULCLEM) as given begins mid-sentence with "Qui tetigerit..." and does not include the initial clause about Abimelech commanding the people, differing structurally from the Hebrew's two-part sentence (command + quoted content).