Genesis 26:9

Summary

Abimelech summons Isaac and confronts him: he has discovered that the woman is actually Isaac's wife, not his sister as Isaac had claimed. Isaac explains his earlier deception by saying he feared he would die because of her.

Key words

• va-yikra ("and he summoned", H7121G) — narrative vav + qal verb, marking the next event in the story sequence: Abimelech's summoning of Isaac.
• akh ("surely", H0389) combined with hinneh ("here!/behold", H2009) — an adverb and interjection together that introduce Abimelech's realization with emphasis, functioning almost as an exclamation of discovery.
• ishtekha ("your wife", H0802H) — feminine singular noun in construct form with the suffix -kha ("your", H9021), literally "wife-of-you", stating the relationship directly.
• achoti ("my sister", H0269) — feminine singular noun in construct form with the suffix -i ("my", H9020), parallel in structure to ishtekha, setting up the direct contrast between the two claims.
• pen ("lest", H6435) — a subordinating particle introducing Isaac's stated fear, governing the imperfect verb amut ("I should die", H4191).

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel direct speeches introduced by the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), used three times in this single verse (once for Abimelech's initial statement, once for Isaac's prior claim being quoted, once for Isaac's reply). Abimelech's confrontation uses a construct-noun pair: ishtekha hi ("she [is] wife-of-you", combining H0802H + H1931) set against achoti hi ("she [is] sister-of-me", combining H0269 + H1931). Both phrases share the identical structure — construct noun + suffix + the pronoun hi ("she", H1931) — which in Hebrew places emphasis on the predicate noun before the pronoun, producing a rhetorical parallelism that highlights the contradiction between what Abimelech now knows and what Isaac previously said.

Isaac's answer opens with ki ("for/that", H3588A), a subordinating particle introducing the reason for his earlier statement, followed by the qal perfect amarti ("I said/thought", H0559) and the purpose/fear clause introduced by pen ("lest", H6435) with the qal imperfect amut ("I should die", H4191). The imperfect aspect of amut frames the death not as a completed or certain event but as a feared possible outcome, matching the hypothetical logic of pen-clauses in Biblical Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Abimelech's opening exclamation as "Ἄρα γε γυνή σού ἐστιν" ("So then, she is indeed your wife"), corresponding to the Hebrew akh hinneh ishtekha hi, though the LXX drops an equivalent for hinneh ("here/behold", H2009) as a separate interjection, folding its force into "Ἄρα γε" ("so then, indeed"). The Vulgate renders this same clause as "Perspicuum est quod uxor tua sit" ("It is clear that she is your wife"), an interpretive expansion not present as a distinct verb in the Hebrew, which has no equivalent for "it is clear." For Isaac's reply, the Hebrew pen amut aleha ("lest I die on account of her", H6435 + H4191 + H5921A) is rendered by the SBLIBRE Spanish translation as "pensé que me matarían por su culpa" ("I thought they would kill me"), introducing a passive/causative sense ("they would kill me") not explicit in the Hebrew qal imperfect amut ("I should die"), which describes Isaac's own dying rather than being killed by others.