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 7:2
By sevens, seven and seven. The Hebrew just repeats the numeral; English has to add a preposition to get the same sense.
Genesis 7:2, in every translation this tool compares.
Hebrew can say a distributive the way a coach says two, two, two, walking down a line splitting people into pairs. Just repeat the number. English cannot do this without inserting a word like by or each, so shivah shivah becomes by sevens, a translation that adds a word the Hebrew never needed.
Because the instruction to take clean animals by sevens is built by simply saying the number twice in a row, a distributive construction English cannot reproduce without adding a whole extra phrase, and the doubled number sits one verse away from a different instruction, two of every kind, that reads at first glance like a flat contradiction.
Every version reads by sevens or seven pairs, correctly, for clean animals, against two, two of a kind, three verses earlier at 6:19-20 for animals generally. Read carelessly in translation, the two instructions look like a straightforward contradiction; read together, sevens for the animals fit for sacrifice, twos as the baseline for every kind, they resolve as one instruction refining the other rather than clashing with it.
שִׁבְעָה שִׁבְעָה shivah shivah · H7651
Shivah shivah, literally seven seven, is simple reduplication of the numeral used to express a distributive sense, seven of each. Hebrew forms distributives this way elsewhere, repeating a number or a noun rather than adding a preposition, a pattern with no direct grammatical equivalent in English syntax.
English has no bare-repetition distributive; two two on its own does not read as a grammatical construction the way shivah shivah does in Hebrew, so translators must supply by or each, adding a word that has no counterpart in the Hebrew text itself.
When you meet a doubled Hebrew word functioning as one grammatical unit, check whether it is marking a distributive sense before assuming it is simple emphasis, and read instructions that seem to conflict across nearby verses as a single set of directions before assuming a contradiction.
By sevens follows the Hebrew idiom most closely, but the versions do divide: ESV and NIV read seven pairs, KJV and NASB read by sevens, and the Hebrew doubling will carry either. The apparent tension with the two-of-a-kind instruction at 6:19-20 is a matter of reading both verses as one coherent set of instructions, sevens for clean animals headed for sacrifice, twos as the general rule, rather than a genuine grammatical problem.
- The parallel two-of-a-kind instruction: Genesis 6:19-20
- Clean animals used in sacrifice immediately after the flood: Genesis 8:20
- Distributive reduplication as a recognized Biblical Hebrew numeral pattern: standard Hebrew grammars
