A Flood in Your Face (Gen 7:7)

The Flood

New to the column? Start here.

Get your free Biblical Hebrew Starter Kit here!

⁷ Then Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the box

וַיָּ֣בֹא נֹ֗חַ וּ֠בָנָיו וְאִשְׁתּ֧וֹ וּנְשֵֽׁי־בָנָ֛יו אִתּ֖וֹ אֶל־הַתֵּבָ֑ה

Now our story resumes, after the background reminder that Noah is 600 years old. We are back in the P voice of Genesis 6, where his “house” (7:1) is referred to in more precise detail, inventorying the eight human beings who were to be saved.

The Hebrew, translated more literally, would sound something like this:

Then came Noah and his sons and his woman and his sons’ women with him to the box.

A few language notes:

• English has come and go; Hebrew has בוא and הלך, which seem to match them — but they don’t, quite, as we’ve seen.

• Hebrew is a VSO language, so the verb comes first in narrative prose. Verbs must match their subjects — I am, you are, he is — and this verb matches the very first subject, Noah himself, and not the chain of and … and … and that follows. Then we find אִתּ֖וֹ itto ‘with him’. Are the sons and wives additional subjects of the verb or simply going “with” Noah?

I’m going to spend some time with this latter point, because (1) this is the first time we’ve seen it happen in the Hebrew text, and (2) the only other time it happens is when essentially this same phrase is repeated in 8:18. The same English combination, but using עִם im instead of אֵת et for “with,” is almost as rare, occurring seven times in Joshua 10, once more in Joshua 11, and just three more times anywhere else in the Bible.