Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 12:3
In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Passive, or reflexive: blessed through you, or blessing themselves by your name.
Genesis 12:3, in every translation this tool compares.
English he was blessed is passive, something done to him. English he blessed himself is reflexive, something he does using himself as the reference point, the way people still say as rich as Rockefeller without Rockefeller doing anything for them personally. Hebrew's one verb form here could be doing either job.
Because the verb stem describing how the nations will be blessed through Abram can be read as passive, they will be blessed, or reflexive, they will bless themselves by his example, and the same promise later in Genesis switches to the stem that supports the second reading, while Paul builds an argument in Galatians on the first.
Every English version reads a passive sense, shall be blessed, following the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Targums, and this is the reading Paul follows in Galatians 3:8, applying it to the gospel reaching the nations through Christ.
וְנִבְרְכוּ venivrechu (בָּרַךְ barakh, niphal) · H1288
The niphal stem of barakh here can carry a passive sense, will be blessed, or, as niphal sometimes does, a reflexive-reciprocal sense, will bless themselves or one another. When the same promise recurs at Genesis 22:18 and 26:4, it switches to the hitpael stem, which leans more clearly reflexive, nations invoking Abraham's name as a byword for blessing, you have done well, like Abraham, rather than nations passively receiving blessing through him.
English must choose one grammatical voice, passive or reflexive, and commit to it in translation, while Hebrew's niphal here sits genuinely between the two senses in a way no single English verb form preserves, so a reader cannot see that the promise's later restatements shift toward the more clearly reflexive stem.
When a Hebrew verb stem is capable of more than one voice, check whether the same promise or phrase recurs elsewhere in a different stem. A later restatement in a less ambiguous form, as with the hitpael at 22:18 and 26:4, is real evidence for how an earlier ambiguous form might have been heard.
The passive reading, blessed through Abraham as an active channel, is the traditional and Pauline reading and fits the covenant's forward momentum toward a Messiah. The reflexive reading, nations blessing themselves by invoking Abraham's name, fits the hitpael restatements later in Genesis and does not require Abraham to be an active agent of anyone else's blessing, only a byword for it.
- The same promise in the hitpael stem: Genesis 22:18; 26:4
- Paul's passive reading in Galatians 3:8
- Septuagint, Vulgate, and Targums all translate with a passive sense
