Genesis 9:10

Summary

This verse continues the list of covenant partners begun in the surrounding context: the divine speech specifies that the agreement extends to every living creature that survived the flood — birds, livestock, and wild animals of the earth — identified specifically as those who came out of the ark.

Key words

• nefesh ("creature", H5315K) — feminine singular noun, here in construct with kol ("every", H3605), forming "every creature," the collective term for living beings before further specification.
• chayah ("living", H2416A) — feminine singular adjective modifying nefesh, together giving "living creature" (nefesh ha-chayah), with the article ha- (H9009) marking it as a defined category.
• 'et ("with", H0854) — this preposition appears twice (with the pronominal suffix -khem, "you," H9036), once after asher ("which," H0834A) and once later, bracketing the list of animals with the phrase "that is with you."
• chayat ("animal of," H2416C) — construct form of "living/animal," appearing twice, each time governing ha'aretz ("the earth," H0776G), producing the repeated phrase "beast of the earth."
• yotze'ei ("those going out of," H3318G) — qal participle, masculine plural construct, from the root meaning "to go out," describing the animals as "the ones who came out of the ark" (ha-tevah, H8392).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence extends a list introduced by the conjunction ve- ("and," H9002) and the object marker 'et, syntactically linking this verse to a governing verb located earlier in the passage. The core phrase kol-nefesh ha-chayah ("every living creature") is then qualified by a relative clause with asher ("which") plus 'itkhem ("is with you"), before being broken down into categories: ba-'of ("among the birds," H5775), ba-behemah ("among the livestock," H0929), and u-ve-khol chayat ha-'aretz ("and among every animal of the earth"). This last phrase is picked up again at the end of the verse, producing a repetition of chayat ha-'aretz — once in the middle of the list and once at the close, after the qualifying clause mikol yotze'ei ha-tevah ("from all who came out of the ark"). This repetition creates a bracketing (inclusio) structure around the phrase "from all who came out of the ark," a stylistic feature visible only in the Hebrew word order.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew repeats 'itkhem ("with you") twice and chayat ha-'aretz ("beast of the earth") twice, producing a bracketing structure. The LXX preserves the double μεθ' ὑμῶν ("with you") but compresses the two occurrences of "beast of the earth" into a single θηρίοις τῆς γῆς, replacing the second occurrence with the summarizing clause "all that came out of the ark." The Vulgate similarly gives one instance of "bestiis terrae," reordering it to the end rather than reproducing the Hebrew's repeated bracketing pattern.