Genesis 19:35

Summary

The verse narrates a second night on which the daughters gave their father wine to drink; the younger daughter then lay with him, and he did not perceive either her lying down or her rising up.

Key words

• tashKeina ("they made drink", H8248H) — hiphil causative form, indicating the daughters caused their father to drink, not merely that he drank.
• tzeiRah ("young [one]", H6810) — feminine singular adjective with the article, functioning as a substantive: "the young one," identifying the younger daughter as the one who acts in this verse.
• yaDa' ("he knew", H3045) — qal perfect, a completed-action verb negated by lo' ("not", H3808), stating that the father lacked awareness.
• shikhVah ("lay down", H7901I) — qal infinitive construct with the preposition be- ("when", H9003) and pronominal suffix -ah ("her", H9044), forming "in her lying down," a temporal clause rather than a finite verb.
• quMah ("arose", H6965B) — qal infinitive construct paralleling shikhVah, paired by the conjunction u- ("and", H9002) to mark two successive moments ("in her lying down and in her rising").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of narrative verbs connected by the vav-consecutive (va-, H9001), each introducing the next event: tashKeina ("they made drink"), Takom ("she arose"), tishKav ("she lay"). This chain structure presents the actions as a sequential unit rather than as separate, isolated statements. The causative hiphil of tashKeina places the agency for the father's drinking on the daughters (plural verb form), even though only the younger daughter, tzeiRah, is the subject of the subsequent actions.

The final clause uses two parallel infinitive constructs, shikhVah ("in her lying down") and quMah ("in her rising"), both governed by the negated perfect verb yaDa' ("he did not know"). This construction — a finite negated verb followed by two paired temporal infinitives with pronominal suffixes — expresses lack of awareness bracketing both the beginning and end of the action, a nuance that requires a full subordinate clause in English ("when she lay down or when she got up") rather than a single-word rendering.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence with a participle, εἰσελθοῦσα ("having entered"), for the daughter's action, an addition not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew text, which moves directly from Takom ("she arose") to tishKav ("she lay"). The Vulgate similarly adds ingressaque ("having entered"), matching the LXX's insertion. Where the Hebrew uses 'avihen ("their father", combining H1, "father", with the plural suffix "their"), the LXX and Vulgate render it with a singular possessive, "her father" (πατρὸς αὐτῆς / patri suo), aligning the referent more closely to the younger daughter alone rather than to both sisters collectively as the Hebrew suffix indicates.