Genesis 19:38

Summary

The passage reports that Lot's younger daughter also bore a son, whom she named Ben-Ammi. The text states that this son became the ancestor of the Ammonites, a status said to persist "until this day."

Key words

• tze'irah ("young", H6810) — feminine singular adjective with the definite article, referring back to "the younger [daughter]," paired earlier in the chapter with her sister the bekhirah ("firstborn").
• gam ("also", H1571) — adverb placed before the independent pronoun hi', creating emphasis: "she too" bore a son, paralleling the older sister's action in the preceding verse.
• yaldah ("she bore", H3205) — qal perfect, marking the birth as a completed event, structurally identical to the verb used for the older sister.
• tikra ("she called", H7121H) — qal narrative form ("and then she called"), continuing the story sequence with the vav-consecutive construction typical of Hebrew narrative.
• avi ("[the] ancestor of", H1) — construct-form noun linking the son directly to benei-Ammon ("the people of Ammon"), establishing a genealogical claim within the sentence itself.

What the text says

The verse is built as a short narrative chain: a perfect-tense clause (yaldah, "she bore") is followed by a vav-consecutive verb (tikra, "and she called"), the standard pattern for sequential action in Biblical Hebrew narrative. The subject is doubled — ha-tze'irah ("the younger [daughter]") together with the independent pronoun hi' ("she") intensified by gam ("also") — which grammatically underscores that this event mirrors, and is separate from, an equivalent action already reported for her sister earlier in the chapter.

The son's name, Ben-Ammi (H1151), is composed of ben ("son") and ammi ("my people"), so the Hebrew text presents the name as self-explanatory: it literally reads "son of my people" as a proper name. The following clause uses a construct chain, avi benei-Ammon ("ancestor of the sons/people of Ammon"), tying this individual to the Ammonites as a group, with the temporal phrase 'ad ha-yom ("until the day/today") closing the verse by extending the claim to the time of the text's composition or transmission.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew name Ben-Ammi already carries its meaning ("son of my people") within the name itself, since it is built from the two words ben and ammi. The LXX instead transliterates the name as Ἀμμάν and then adds a separate explanatory clause, "ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ γένους μου" ("the son of my race/kin"), splitting name and meaning into two parts. The Vulgate follows the same pattern: it gives the name as Ammon and then adds "id est, Filius populi mei" ("that is, son of my people") as a distinct gloss, whereas the Hebrew presents the etymology as inseparable from the name.