Genesis 9:24

Summary

Genesis 9:24 describes Noah waking up from the effects of his wine and learning what his youngest son had done to him. The verse uses two consecutive narrative verbs to mark the sequence: first waking, then knowing/perceiving the action.

Key words

• yiqetz ("he awoke", H3364) — qal narrative form, marking the first event in the sequence ("and then he woke").
• miyeino ("from his wine", H3196 + suffix) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "his," indicating the source or cause of his prior state.
• yeda ("he knew", H3045) — qal narrative form, chained to the previous verb by the vav, marking the second event ("and then he knew").
• 'asher ("that which", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause describing the son's action.
• haqqatan ("the young", H6996A) — adjective with definite article, modifying beno ("his son", H1121A) to specify which son is meant.

What the text says

The verse is built on two verbs joined by the narrative vav (va-), a construction typical of Hebrew storytelling that presents actions in strict sequence: va-yiqetz ("and he awoke") followed by va-yeda ("and he knew"). This chaining shows that Noah's awakening and his subsequent awareness of events are presented as two distinct, sequential moments, not a single simultaneous action.

The phrase mi-yeino ("from his wine") uses the preposition mi (H9006) to indicate that the wine is the point of departure — Noah is coming out of a prior state connected to the wine, though the text does not specify intoxication explicitly beyond this prepositional phrase.

The object of Noah's knowledge is marked by the untranslated direct object marker 'et (H0853), followed by the relative clause introduced by 'asher ("that which"). This clause reports what "his son" (beno, construct form indicating possession — "son of him") had done, using the qal perfect 'asah ("he had done", H6213A), a completed action prior to Noah's knowing. The son is further specified as ha-qatan ("the young/small one"), an adjective with the definite article modifying "his son."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first verb as exenēpsen ("sobered up") where the Hebrew yiqetz (H3364) means "awoke" — the LXX makes explicit an inference about intoxication that the Hebrew verb itself does not state directly. The Vulgate's evigilans ("awaking") stays closer to the Hebrew sense of waking. For the son's description, the LXX uses ho neōteros ("the younger"), while the Hebrew ha-qatan (H6996A) more literally means "the small/young one"; the Vulgate's minor ("lesser/younger") and the English translations "youngest" render this same adjective with a comparative sense not morphologically marked in the Hebrew form itself.