Genesis 8:12

Summary

Noah waits an additional seven days and sends the dove out from the ark once more. This time the dove does not come back to him, which signals that it has found dry ground to settle on.

Key words

• va-yiyaChel ("and he waited", H3176) — niphal narrative form; the niphal stem here carries a passive/reflexive nuance ("he was made to wait" or "he waited"), continuing the story's chain of narrative-vav verbs.
• od ("again/still", H5750) — appears twice in the verse (positions 3 and 18), framing the waiting period and reinforcing the repetition of the action.
• ya'seFah ("she repeated/added", H3254) — qal perfect, third-person feminine; a completed action verb that grammatically requires a following infinitive to specify what was "added" or "repeated."
• shuv ("to return", H7725) — qal infinitive; paired with ya'seFah, forming the construction "she did not add to return," i.e., "she did not return again."
• ha-yonah ("the dove", H3123) — feminine singular noun with definite article, marked by the object marker 'et (H0853), identifying it as the direct object of yeshallach.

What the text says

The verse opens with two narrative-vav verbs in sequence — va-yiyaChel ("and he waited") and va-yeshallach ("and he sent out") — which is the standard Hebrew way of advancing a story through consecutive completed actions. The niphal form of yiyaChel differs from a straightforward active "he waited," giving the waiting a passive or endured quality rather than an active choice, though in practice both are rendered similarly in translation. The piel form of yeshallach ("he sent out") is an intensive stem, suggesting a deliberate, purposeful release of the dove, distinct from a simple active verb.

The clause describing the dove's non-return is built with a distinctive Hebrew idiom: lo' yasfah shuv — literally "she did not add to return." Here the qal perfect verb ya'seFah ("she added/repeated") governs the infinitive shuv ("to return"), together meaning "she did not return again" or "she did not repeat returning." This construction (finite verb of "adding" plus infinitive) is a common Hebrew way of expressing repeated or non-repeated action, and it cannot be reproduced literally in English or other target languages without sounding awkward — hence translations simplify it to "did not return again" or "did not return anymore."

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (quæ non est reversa ultra ad eum, "which did not return again to him") and the LXX (οὐ προσέθετο τοῦ ἐπιστρέψαι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔτι, "she did not add to return to him again") both preserve something of the Hebrew "added to return" idiom, with the LXX's προσέθετο ("added") closely mirroring the Hebrew ya'seFah. Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) render this idiom more idiomatically as simply "did not return," without reproducing the "added/repeated" verb structure explicit in the Hebrew and echoed in the LXX.