Genesis 9:14

Summary

The verse describes a future recurring event: when clouds appear over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the clouds. The Hebrew phrasing links the divine action of "clouding" to the subsequent visibility of the bow, using two sequential perfect verbs that mark a temporal/causal sequence within the narrative.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect; opens the sentence and signals that this action follows logically/temporally from what precedes in the passage, functioning like "and it shall come to pass that..."
• 'a.N...i ("bring cloud", H6049A) — piel infinitive construct with 1st-person suffix ("in my clouding"); the piel (intensive) stem gives the sense of actively producing or bringing about clouds, not merely clouds existing.
• 'a.Nan ("cloud", H6051) — masculine singular noun, appearing twice (once as verbal root, once as object), creating a repetition of the same consonantal root in verb and noun form.
• nir.'a.Tah ("it will be seen", H7200G) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect; the bow is not described as acting but as becoming visible, the passive voice placing focus on the appearing rather than an agent doing the showing.
• Ke.shet ("bow", H7198) — feminine singular noun with definite article ha., "the bow," referring back to an object already introduced in context.

What the text says

The sentence is built on two parallel sequential-perfect verbs, ha.Yah and nir.'a.Tah, both continuing a narrative chain begun earlier in the passage. The first clause, be.'a.N...i 'a.Nan 'al-ha.'A.retz ("in my clouding a cloud over the earth"), uses a piel infinitive construct built from the same root as the following noun 'a.Nan ("cloud"). This root repetition — verb and object sharing the same consonants — creates a figura etymologica: "when I cloud [a] cloud," emphasizing the deliberate, intensive production of clouds rather than their passive occurrence.

The second clause shifts to the niphal stem for nir.'a.Tah ("it will be seen"), a passive/reflexive form that presents the bow's appearance as a resulting, visible event rather than describing an agent placing it there. The definite article on ha.Qeshet ("the bow") assumes the object has already been referenced. The preposition be. ("in") recurs in both be.'a.Nan phrases, syntactically tying the cloud-forming action to the location where the bow becomes visible.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew word list shows ha.Qeshet ("the bow") without a possessive suffix in this verse. The LXX renders it as τὸ τόξον μου ("my bow"), and the Vulgate similarly has arcus meus ("my bow"), both adding a first-person possessive not present in the Hebrew form supplied here. The LXX text also shows an irregular rendering of the clause describing cloud-gathering (a truncated form in the Swete edition), differing from the clearer piel-infinitive construction of the Hebrew.