Texts in Conversation
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.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
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.”
LXX Genesis 15:6
Septuagint
5 Then he brought him outside and said to him, “Look up to the sky, and number the stars, if you will be able to count them.” And he said, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And Abram believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. 7 Then he said to him, “I am the God who brought you out of the country of the Chaldeans so as to give you this land to possess.”
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Notes and 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. ..."
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