Genesis 8:7

Summary

Noah sends out the raven from the ark; the bird engages in continual back-and-forth movement until the waters have dried from the surface of the earth. The Hebrew describes this motion using a distinctive doubled verb construction rather than a simple narrative statement.

Key words

• y'shalach ("he sent out", H7971) — piel stem, intensive form of the root meaning "to send," indicating a deliberate, purposeful sending forth (contrasted with the simple qal used elsewhere for sending).
• yetze' ("it went out", H3318) — qal narrative verb, the finite form that carries the storyline forward.
• yatzo' ("to go out", H3318) — infinitive absolute, repeating the same root as the previous verb; this doubling construction intensifies or extends the action rather than naming a new event.
• shov ("returning", H7725) — infinitive absolute, paired with yatzo' to form the idiomatic phrase "going out and returning," expressing repeated or continuous motion.
• yevoshet ("drying up", H3001) — infinitive construct with 'ad ("until", H5704), marking the temporal endpoint of the raven's activity.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure places two infinitives absolute back to back — yatzo' ("to go out") and shov ("returning") — following the finite verb yetze' ("it went out"). This is a common Biblical Hebrew idiom in which a finite verb is reinforced by its own infinitive absolute, and here that infinitive is further paired with a second infinitive from a different root (shuv, "to return"). The resulting sense is not a single exit but a repeated, oscillating movement — the raven going out and coming back repeatedly — which single-word translations like "went out" cannot fully capture without added phrasing such as "back and forth" or "to and fro."

The clause is bounded temporally by 'ad yevoshet ("until the drying up"), an infinitive construct governed by the preposition 'ad, which sets the endpoint of the raven's repeated motion as the drying of ha-mayim ("the waters", H4325) from ha-'aretz ("the earth", H0776).

Differences between versions

The LXX adds an explanatory purpose clause absent from the Hebrew: τοῦ ἰδεῖν εἰ κεκόπακεν τὸ ὕδωρ ("to see if the water had abated"), specifying why the raven was sent — information not present in the Hebrew text. The LXX and Vulgate also render the Hebrew's repeated "going out and returning" idiom differently: the LXX states the raven "went out and did not return" (οὐχ ὑπέστρεψεν), and the Vulgate similarly reads "it kept going out and not returning" (egrediebatur et non revertebatur) — both describing the raven as failing to return, whereas the Hebrew infinitive-absolute construction more naturally suggests repeated back-and-forth movement rather than a single failure to return.