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.
zera
Seed. Singular in form, collective in sense, and Paul builds an argument on that.
Genesis 12:7, in every translation this tool compares.
Sheep. Fish. One form, one or many, and the sentence tells you which. English has the pattern and rarely thinks about it.
Because Galatians 3:16 argues from the fact that the word is singular, and the Hebrew noun is a collective like English sheep, which is exactly the tension worth seeing.
Versions read seed, offspring, or descendants.
זֶרַע zera · H2233
Zera is agricultural seed and by extension offspring. It is grammatically singular and usually collective, so descendants is normally right. Paul at Galatians 3:16 presses the singular form, which is a rabbinic style of argument rather than a claim about ordinary Hebrew usage.
English offspring is also collective, so the range survives; what does not survive is that the Hebrew is formally singular, which is Paul's whole point.
If a New Testament argument turns on the grammatical form of an Old Testament word, check whether that form is normal first. Often it is, and the argument is a rhetorical move rather than a lexical one.
Modern versions read offspring or descendants; the King James reads seed.
- Genesis 12:7; 13:15; 22:18
- Galatians 3:16 presses the singular
- zera as agricultural seed: Genesis 1:11
