I was teaching my 4-year-old the following verse from this week's Torah Portion, taken from G*d's promise to Noach after the Flood:
'I Myself am establishing a covenant with you and your offspring after you.
Va'ani hineni mekim et-beriti itechem ve'et-zar'achem achareychem.
The connective word "et" does not have an English equivalent. It links a verb to a direct object. What is interesting here is the grammatical role of "and your offspring after you". This is generally translated as being connected to "with", but grammatically, it is a direct object going back to the verb, "establishing". This parallelism seems, in my reading, to be emphasized in that both "et-beriti" (my covenant) and "et-zarachem" (your offspring) are hyphenated.
This means, that our offspring are "established" by G*d, and are linked to the divine covenant. I find that a very interesting way to think about children. What do you think?
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