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LXX Genesis

Septuagint

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Chapter 15

1 And after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram, I shield you, your reward shall be very great. 2 And Abram said, Master, what will you give me? whereas I am departing without a child, but the son of Masek my home-born female slave, this Eliezer of Damascus is my heir. 3 And Abram said, Since you have given me no seed, my home-born servant shall succeed me. 4 And immediately there was a voice of the Lord to him, saying, This shall not be your heir; but he that shall come out of you shall be your heir. 5 And he brought him out and said to him, Look up now to heaven, and count the stars, if you shall be able to number them fully, and he said,⁠ Thus shall your seed be. 6 And Abram believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.⁠ 7 And he said to him, I am God that brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, so as to give you this land to inherit. 8 And he said, Master and Lord, how shall I know that I shall inherit it? 9 And he said to him, Take for me a heifer in her third year, and a she-goat in her third year, and a ram in his third year, and a dove and a pigeon. 10 So he took to him all these, and divided them in the midst, and set them opposite to each other, but the birds he did not divide. 11 And birds came down upon the bodies, even upon the divided parts of them,⁠ and Abram sat down by them. 12 And about sunset a trance fell upon Abram, and look! a great gloomy terror falls upon him. 13 And it was said to Abram, You shall surely know that your seed shall be a temporary resident in a land not their own, and they shall enslave them, and afflict them, and humble them four hundred years. 14 And the nation which they shall serve I will judge; and after this, they shall come forth here with much property. 15 But you shall depart to your fathers in peace, buried in a good old age. 16 And in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the sins of the Amorites are not yet filled up, even until now. 17 And when the sun was about to set, there was a flame, and look, a smoking furnace and lamps of fire, which passed between these divided pieces. 18 In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates. 19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, 21 and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 15:6 and LXX Genesis 15:6

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

The Hebrew version of Genesis 15:6 leaves the subject of the verb unstated, so it could possibly say Abram declared the righteousness himself. The Greek version makes the verb passive, “it was reckoned to him,” explicitly saying God is the one who does.

Passages

Genesis 15:6

Hebrew Bible
5 The Lord took him outside and said, “Gaze into the sky and count the stars—if you are able to count them!” Then he said to him, “So will your descendants be.” 6 Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord credited it as righteousness to him. 7 The Lord said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

LXX Genesis 15:6

Septuagint
5 And he brought him out and said to him, Look up now to heaven, and count the stars, if you shall be able to number them fully, and he said, Thus shall your seed be. 6 And Abram believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. 7 And he said to him, I am God that brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, so as to give you this land to inherit.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Genesis

References

"... The Septuagint “God,” instead of “the Lord,” is in accordance with this version’s somewhat arbitrary interchange of the divine names, here, perhaps, from a desire to give the greatest generalness of form to this important statement; the same change is made in the next verse (a difference of text is less probable). The passive “it was reckoned” is either from a different Hebrew text from ours, or it is a free rendering of our text-word (compare Psalm 106. 31). The insertion of the proper name instead of the personal pronoun (as here “Abram” for “he”) to relieve the indistinctness of the Hebrew, or to bring the subject out more prominently, is not uncommon in the Septuagint; or the proper name may have here stood in the Hebrew text of the translators. ..."
Crawford Howell Toy, Quotations in the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), 132.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 15:6 and LXX Genesis 15:6

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