Genesis 8:5

Summary

The verse states that the waters kept receding until the tenth month, and that on the first day of that tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. The Hebrew construction emphasizes the gradual, continuous nature of the water's decrease before the mountain peaks emerge.

Key words

• haLokh ("going", H1980G) — infinitive absolute of the verb "to go/walk," paired with the finite verb haYu to intensify or extend the action, expressing a continuous or progressive process ("going and decreasing").
• chaSor ("decreasing", H2637) — a second infinitive absolute, paired with haLokh; together this doubled infinitive construction is a common Biblical Hebrew idiom for gradual, ongoing motion.
• nir'u ("they were seen", H7200G) — niphal (passive) perfect, meaning the mountain tops were made visible or became seen, without specifying who saw them.
• ra'shei ("tops of", H7218I) — masculine plural construct form, meaning "the tops of," grammatically bound to heharim ("the mountains") to form the phrase "tops of the mountains."
• ba'asiri ("in the tenth", H6224) — ordinal number repeated from the earlier clause, anchoring the date formula to "the tenth month."

What the text says

The sentence divides into two parts. The first part, veHamayim hayu haLokh vechaSor ("and the waters were going and decreasing"), uses the perfect verb haYu ("they were") combined with two infinitive absolutes, haLokh and chaSor. This doubled infinitive construction does not simply state that the waters decreased once; it grammatically marks the action as continuous or repeated, something that Spanish or English translations render with phrases like "continued to recede" or "fueron decreciendo," since these languages lack an equivalent to the infinitive-absolute intensifier.

The second part introduces the date: ba'asiri be'echad lachodesh ("in the tenth, on one/first of the month"), specifying day one of the tenth month. The verb nir'u, a niphal perfect, closes the verse — the mountain tops "were seen," a passive construction that does not identify an explicit observer (Noah is not named as the subject).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text names the same month twice — hachodesh ha'asiri ("the tenth month") and then ba'asiri ("in the tenth") — both referring to the tenth month, as does the Vulgate (decimum mensem... decimo mense). The LXX, however, gives two different months: πορευόμενον ἠλαττονοῦτο ἕως τοῦ δεκάτου μηνός ("until the tenth month"), but then ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑνδεκάτῳ μηνί ("in the eleventh month") for the second occurrence, where the Hebrew and Vulgate repeat "tenth."