Genesis 11:14

Summary

Genesis 11:14 states that Shelah lived thirty years and then fathered Eber. The verse follows the standard genealogical formula found throughout Genesis 11, marking age at fatherhood followed by a narrative report of the birth.

Key words

• chai ("he lived", H2421) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular, denoting a completed state of living for a specified duration before the next event.
• shelishim ("thirty", H7970) — cardinal number, masculine plural, quantifying the shanah that follows.
• shanah ("year[s]", H8141) — feminine singular noun; despite the plural number shelishim, the noun itself appears in the singular form, a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew numerical constructions.
• vayyoled ("and he fathered", H3205) — hiphil (causative) narrative form, waw-consecutive attached; the causative stem conveys "caused to be born" i.e., "fathered," and the narrative vav links this action sequentially to the preceding statement of age.
• 'et (H0853) — direct object marker, untranslated, signaling that 'Ever ("Eber", H5677G) is the direct object of vayyoled.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by the narrative vav (וַ, H9001). The first clause, "ve-Shelach chai shelishim shanah," uses a simple qal perfect (chai) to state a completed condition — Shelah's living thirty years — functioning as a temporal setup. The second clause, introduced by the narrative vav on vayyoled, uses the hiphil stem of the same root (y-l-d) that appears in chai's clause contextually, shifting from stative "living" to causative "fathering." This hiphil form grammatically marks Shelah as the causer of Eber's birth rather than the one born, a distinction the causative stem encodes directly in the verb morphology.

The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before 'Ever signals unambiguously that Eber is the grammatical object of the fathering action, not a secondary subject. This is a structural feature of Hebrew object-marking that does not carry over into English or Spanish translations, which rely instead on word order alone to indicate the object.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text gives Shelah's age as shelishim ("thirty", H7970) years. The Septuagint (LXX) renders this as "ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα" (one hundred thirty) years, a numerical difference from the Hebrew figure of thirty. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew tradition with "triginta annis" (thirty years), matching the Hebrew shelishim shanah rather than the LXX's number. Modern translations consulted (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) also follow the "thirty years" figure found in the Hebrew and Vulgate.