Left or Right? (Gen 13:9)
Abram and Lot
9 Be so kind as to detach yourself from me.
הִפָּ֥רֶד נָ֖א מֵעָלָ֑י
We’ve spoken quite a lot, since meeting Abram, about the little word נא na (click for a refresher). When you direct an imperative verb at some one — the verb form that imperiously “commands” someone to do something — you may not be that person’s “commander.” Even if you are, you may want to issue that command in a form that suggests: “We both know you have to do this. Still, I am going to frame my command as a polite request.” That’s precisely what Abram (senior to Lot either as his uncle or as his elder brother) is doing here.
We’ve spoken a bit less about the verb in our phrase, פרד p‑r‑d ‘separate’. We saw one river separate into four in 2:10 after watering Xanadu Park, and we also saw this verb in 10:5 (with the descendants of Japheth) and 10:32 (with all the nations). In those cases, פרד seems to mean “branching out.”
Premium subscribers, though, have seen this word with a meaning more like the one it must have here, when Ruth told Naomi, “YHWH do thus to me, and then some, if death separates me from you” (Ruth 1:17). As we noted in that series just a week ago, some scholars see a deliberate link between Ruth 1 and Genesis 13. Abram is not asking Lot to “branch out” along with him — though in a sense this is indeed what will happen. He is saying the opposite of what Ruth told Naomi. “You and I will no longer be part of the same group.”
Just to remind you, as I occasionally like to do, of how different the same biblical verse can feel depending on which version you read, here is a selection of different translations of our phrase:
