Genesis 6:17

Summary

The verse presents a divine first-person declaration: the speaker announces the imminent bringing of ha-mabbul ("the flood", H3999) of mayim ("water", H4325G) upon the earth, with the stated purpose of destroying all flesh that has ruach chayyim ("breath of life", H7307H/H2416E). The verse closes by reaffirming that everything on earth will die (yigva, H1478).

Key words

• 'ani ("I", H0589) + hinneni ("here I am / behold me", H2009+H9040) — the independent pronoun followed by the interjection with 1st-person suffix creates an emphatic doubling of the speaker's identity before the main verb, a construction used to introduce a decisive divine statement.
• mevi' ("bringing", H0935P) — hiphil participle, causative aspect ("causing to come"), marking the action as ongoing/imminent rather than a simple past or future finite verb.
• lə-shachet ("to destroy", H7843) — piel infinitive construct with prefixed lə- ("to/for"), expressing purpose: the flood is brought in order to destroy.
• ruach chayyim ("breath of life", H7307H construct + H2416E) — construct chain literally "breath of life-forms" (plural chayyim), describing the vital element within "all flesh".
• yigva' ("will die/expire", H1478) — qal imperfect, denoting the resulting future/ongoing state of death for "all that is in the earth".

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a double emphatic marker, va-'ani hinneni ("and I, here I am"), placing heavy grammatical stress on the speaker before the main action verb appears. This is followed by the hiphil participle mevi' ("bringing"), which in Biblical Hebrew participial constructions often conveys an action that is about to happen or is in the process of happening, rather than a simple future tense. The object is et-ha-mabbul mayim ("the flood, water"), where mabbul and mayim stand in apposition — "the flood" is specified as consisting of "water."

The purpose clause is introduced by the piel infinitive lə-shachet ("to destroy"), governed by the preposition lə- ("to/for"), indicating intent or result. Its object is kol-basar ("all flesh", H1320), further qualified by the relative clause 'asher-bo ruach chayyim ("which in it [is] breath of life"). The phrase ruach chayyim uses a plural noun chayyim in construct with ruach, a common Hebrew idiom for "living beings" or "life-force," not indicating grammatical plurality of "breath" itself.

The final clause, kol 'asher ba-'aretz yigva', repeats the totalizing scope ("all that is on the earth") with the qal imperfect yigva', a verb specifically denoting expiring or dying out, distinct from ordinary "dying" verbs, and reinforces the comprehensiveness of the flood's effect already stated in the purpose clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening emphatic Hebrew construction 'ani hinneni simply as ἐγὼ δὲ ἰδοὺ ("but I, behold"), collapsing the doubled pronoun-interjection structure into a single "behold." The Vulgate omits the initial pronoun altogether, beginning with Ecce ego ("Behold, I"), which preserves some emphasis but restructures the word order compared to the Hebrew. The Hebrew appositional phrase ha-mabbul mayim ("the flood, water") appears in the LXX as τὸν κατακλυσμὸν ὕδωρ (similarly appositional), while the Vulgate reads aquas diluvii ("waters of the flood"), turning the apposition into a genitive construction.