Genesis 26:25

Summary

Genesis 26:25 narrates four consecutive actions by Isaac and his servants at a location introduced earlier in the chapter: building an altar, invoking the name of Yehovah, pitching a tent, and digging a well. The verse is structured as a chain of narrative verbs, all marked by the adverb sham ("there", H8033G) repeated three times.

Key words

• va-yiven ("and he built", H1129) — qal narrative form, third person masculine singular; opens the sequence of actions with the basic verb "to build" applied to the altar.
• va-yikra ("and he called", H7121G) — qal narrative, followed by the preposition be ("on", H9003) and shem ("name of", H8034) in construct form, producing the fixed expression "called on the name of Yehovah."
• Yehovah (H3068G) — the divine name, appearing here as the object of the invocation formula rather than in a narrative or descriptive role.
• ahol-o ("his tent", H0168G + H9023) — noun in construct form with a possessive suffix "his," indicating the tent belongs to Isaac, the subject of the surrounding verbs.
• be'er ("a well", H0875) — feminine singular noun, the final object obtained through digging, with no definite article, marking it as a new, unspecified well.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four qal narrative verbs, each attached to the conjunction va ("and", H9001), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative sequences actions one after another: va-yiven ("he built"), va-yikra ("he called"), va-yet ("he pitched", H5186), and va-yikhru ("they dug", H3738B). This chaining structure presents the events as a continuous, ordered sequence rather than as isolated statements. The adverb sham ("there") recurs three times (with the building of the altar, the pitching of the tent, and the digging of the well), anchoring all these actions to the same location without naming it again in this verse.

A shift in subject occurs partway through: the first three verbs (build, call, pitch) have Isaac as an implicit third-person singular subject, while the final verb va-yikhru ("they dug") shifts to third-person plural, with the explicit subject avdei-Yitzchak ("servants of Isaac", H5650 + H3327) given in construct form. This grammatical shift distinguishes Isaac's own ritual and settlement actions (altar, invocation, tent) from the labor performed by his servants (digging the well).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yikra be-shem Yehovah ("and he called on the name of Yehovah") as ἐπεκαλέσατο τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου ("he called upon the name of the Lord"), preserving the invocation structure. The Vulgate, however, renders the final clause differently: instead of stating that the servants themselves dug the well (as in the Hebrew va-yikhru... avdei-Yitzchak, "the servants of Isaac dug"), it reads præcepitque servis suis ut foderent puteum ("and he commanded his servants to dig a well"), introducing an act of command by Isaac that is not explicit in the Hebrew verb form, which simply states that the servants performed the digging.