Genesis 8:18

וַיֵּצֵא־נֹחַ וּבָנָיו וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וּנְשֵֽׁי־בָנָיו אִתּֽוֹ׃

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The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וַיֵּ֖צֵא־נֹ֑חַ וּבָנָ֛יו וְאִשְׁתּ֥וֹ וּנְשֵֽׁי־בָנָ֖יו אִתּֽוֹ׃

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ ἐξῆλθεν Νῶε καὶ ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτοῦ κα αἱ γυναῖκες τῶν υἱῶν αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτοῦ·

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

Egressus est ergo Noë, et filii ejus: uxor illius, et uxores filiorum ejus cum eo.

Spanish

Noé salió del arca con sus hijos, su mujer y sus nueras.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Entonces salió Noé, y sus hijos, y su mujer, y las mujeres de sus hijos con él.

English

So Noah came out, along with his sons and his wife and his sons ’ wives.

What the text says

Summary

The verse narrates Noah's exit from the ark, followed by an enumeration of the family members who accompanied him: his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives. The Hebrew presents this as a single continuous clause built through successive coordinated nouns.

Key words

  • va-yetze ("and he went out", H3318) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the main action of the sequence; the subject "Noah" follows immediately.
  • No'ach ("Noah", H5146) — proper name functioning as the subject of the verb yetze.
  • vanav ("his sons", H1121A + H9023) — plural noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, literally "sons-of-him."
  • ishto ("his wife", H0802H + H9023) — singular noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, literally "wife-of-him."
  • neshei-vanav ("wives of his sons", H0802H + H1121A + H9023) — double construct chain: "wives" in construct governs "his sons," producing a compound phrase.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a single verb, va-yetze ("and he went out", H3318), followed by its subject No'ach ("Noah", H5146). After this main clause, the text adds a series of noun phrases joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002), each one in construct form with pronominal suffixes: u-vanav ("and his sons"), ve-ishto ("and his wife"), u-neshei-vanav ("and the wives of his sons"). Grammatically, only Noah is the explicit subject of the verb yatza ("to go out", H3318); the rest of the family members are added through simple coordination, without a repeated verb for each of them.

The construct chain neshei-vanav ("wives of his sons") shows a doubled genitive relationship: neshei ("wives of", construct plural) governs banav ("his sons," construct plural with suffix). This produces a compact expression that in English requires the full phrase "the wives of his sons." The final word, ito ("with him", H0854 + H9033), closes the sentence by locating all these people relative to Noah, using a preposition with pronominal suffix.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew lists the family members in the order: sons, wife, wives of sons. The LXX (Septuagint) rearranges this order, placing "the wife" (ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ) before "the sons" (οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτοῦ), the reverse of the Hebrew sequence. The Vulgate follows an order closer to the LXX, listing "filii ejus" (his sons) after Noah but before "uxor illius" (his wife) is separated by punctuation, differing again from the exact concatenation found in the Hebrew.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.