Genesis 8:3
וַיָּשֻׁבוּ הַמַּיִם מֵעַל הָאָרֶץ הָלוֹךְ וָשׁוֹב וַיַּחְסְרוּ הַמַּיִם מִקְצֵה חֲמִשִּׁים וּמְאַת יֽוֹם׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיָּשֻׁ֧בוּ הַמַּ֛יִם מֵעַ֥ל הָאָ֖רֶץ הָל֣וֹךְ וָשׁ֑וֹב וַיַּחְסְר֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם מִקְצֵ֕ה חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים וּמְאַ֖ת יֽוֹם׃
καὶ ἐνεδίδου τὸ ὕδωρ πορευόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς· ἐνεδίδου τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ ἠλαττονοῦτο μετὰ πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν ἡμέρας.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Reversæque sunt aquæ de terra euntes et redeuntes: et cœperunt minui post centum quinquaginta dies.
Poco a poco las aguas se fueron retirando de la tierra. Al cabo de ciento cincuenta días, el nivel del agua había bajado.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y tornáronse las aguas de sobre la tierra, yendo y volviendo: y decrecieron las aguas al cabo de ciento y cincuenta días.
The waters receded steadily from the earth, and after 150 days the waters had gone down.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Genesis 8:3 describes the waters receding from the earth in a continuous, back-and-forth motion, and states that by the end of 150 days the waters had diminished. The verse uses two verbs of movement framing an idiomatic infinitive construction to convey gradualness.
Key words
- vayashuvu ("they turned back", H7725) — qal narrative form, third person masculine plural, advancing the story line ("and then they turned back").
- halokh ("going", H1980) and vashov ("turning back", H7725) — both qal infinitives absolute; paired together, they do not add new events but intensify or characterize the ongoing manner of the preceding verb.
- vayachseru ("they decreased", H2637) — qal narrative form, third masculine plural, marking the next stage of action after the retreating.
- qtzeh ("end of", H7097) — masculine singular construct noun, linking to the following numeral phrase ("end of X").
- me'at ("hundred", H3967) — feminine singular construct, joined with chamishim ("fifty", H2572) to form the compound number "one hundred and fifty."
What the text says
The clause vayashuvu hamayim me'al ha'aretz ("the waters turned back from upon the earth") is followed by the paired infinitives absolute halokh vashov ("going and turning back"). In Biblical Hebrew, this construction—verb plus doubled infinitive absolute—does not describe two separate motions but functions adverbially, expressing that the retreat was continuous, repeated, or gradual. The subject (hamayim, "the waters", H4325) is grammatically plural, consistent with the plural verb forms.
The second clause, vayachseru hamayim, introduces a new verb (H2637, "to decrease") marking the outcome of the gradual retreat. The time notice miqtzeh chamishim ume'at yom ("from the end of one hundred and fifty days") uses a construct chain: qtzeh ("end of") governs the compound numeral chamishim ume'at ("fifty and a hundred"), which precedes yom ("day", H3117) in the singular despite denoting a plural count of days — a common pattern in Hebrew numeral syntax.
Differences between versions
The Vulgate’s euntes et redeuntes ("going and returning") reflects the Hebrew infinitive absolute pair halokh vashov fairly literally, preserving the sense of repeated motion. The LXX, however, renders the passage differently: it uses ἐνεδίδου ("was yielding/subsiding") twice and πορευόμενον ("going"), which does not reproduce the paired infinitive-absolute construction of the Hebrew and instead presents the recession as a single continuous verbal action without the "going and returning" imagery. Both the LXX and Vulgate agree in placing the 150-day marker at the point when the waters had diminished, matching the Hebrew miqtzeh... yom phrase.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.