Exodus 2:1

Summary

The verse reports two consecutive actions: a man "from the house of Levi" went, and he "took" a "daughter of Levi." The Hebrew text does not name either figure, referring to them only by their descent from Levi.

Key words

• vayyelekh ("he went", H1980) — qal wayyiqtol (narrative past) form; opens the account with a simple sequential action, "and then he went."
• mibbeit ("from the house of", H1004) — construct form with the preposition mi ("from"), marking lineage or clan origin rather than a physical dwelling in this context.
• Levi (H3878) — proper name, repeated twice in the verse, once for the man's paternal line and once for the woman's.
• vayyiqqach ("he took", H3947) — qal wayyiqtol form, continuing the narrative chain; paired with the direct object marker 'et (H0853) before "daughter of Levi."
• bat ("daughter of", H1323) — construct form, parallel in structure to beit ("house of"), creating a grammatical echo between the man's and woman's descriptions.

What the text says

The verse is built on two narrative wayyiqtol verbs — vayyelekh ("he went") and vayyiqqach ("he took") — joined by the narrative vav (H9001), which strings the actions together as a simple temporal sequence: first the going, then the taking. Neither verb carries an explicit destination or manner; the text states only that the actions occurred, without elaborating on circumstances.

Both principal nouns, ish ("a man", H0376) and the unnamed woman, are defined solely through construct phrases tied to Levi: mibbeit Levi ("from the house of Levi") and bat-Levi ("daughter of Levi"). The construct forms beit and bat create a structural parallel — house and daughter — both anchored to the same name, Levi, repeated at the end of each half of the verse. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before bat-Levi signals that "daughter of Levi" is the grammatical object of vayyiqqach, though the verb itself, "to take," is untranslated further—no word for "wife" or "marriage" appears in the Hebrew clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening differently, using a relative clause structure ("there was a certain one... who took") and "tribe" (φυλῆς) where the Hebrew has beit ("house of"). The Vulgate adds the word "uxorem" ("wife"), explicitly stating what the Hebrew leaves implicit in the verb vayyiqqach ("he took"), and phrases the woman's origin as "stirpis suae" ("of his own stock") rather than directly repeating "daughter of Levi" as the Hebrew does.