Genesis 2:21

Summary

The verse narrates four consecutive actions performed by YHWH 'Elohim: causing a deep sleep to fall on the 'adam ("man"), the man sleeping, the taking of one of his ribs, and the closing of flesh in its place. The verbs are chained by narrative vav, marking a sequence of discrete events.

Key words

• va-yappel ("and he made fall", H5307G) — hiphil narrative form: hiphil marks causation, so the subject (YHWH 'Elohim) causes the sleep to happen to another, rather than experiencing it himself.
• tardemah ("a deep sleep", H8639) — feminine singular noun designating a state of unconsciousness, the direct object of the causative verb.
• va-yiqqach ("and he took", H3947G) — qal narrative, simple active action, continuing the chain of events after the sleep.
• mi-tzal'otav ("of his ribs", H6763 + H9023) — plural construct noun with 3ms suffix "his," preceded by the partitive preposition min ("of," H9006), indicating that only one item is taken from a plural set belonging to the man.
• tachtennah ("in place of it", H8478H + H9034) — construct noun with 3fs suffix "her/it," referring back to the feminine noun tzal'ot ("ribs"), marking spatial/replacement relation.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of four verbs, each introduced by narrative vav + prefixed verb form, producing a sequence: "and he made-fall... and he-slept... and he-took... and he-closed." This chaining structure presents the events as sequential rather than simultaneous, each action following the completion of the previous one in the narrative flow.

The first verb, yappel (H5307G), is hiphil, a causative stem: the grammatical subject YHWH 'Elohim is not the one who falls asleep but the one who causes the tardemah ("deep sleep," H8639) to happen to the 'adam. The sleeping itself is expressed by a separate qal verb, yishan (H3462), attributed to the man as subject. The taking of the rib, yiqqach (H3947G), specifies 'achat mi-tzal'otav — "one from his ribs" — using the preposition min (H9006) partitively to indicate selection of a single item from a group. The final clause, yisgor basar tachtennah, uses the noun tachat (H8478H) in construct form with a 3fs suffix agreeing grammatically with the feminine noun tzal'ah ("rib"), indicating the flesh is closed in the specific location vacated.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tardemah (H8639, "deep sleep") with ékstasis ("trance/ecstasy"), a term with different semantic range than the Hebrew "deep sleep," while the Vulgate uses sopor ("deep sleep"), closer to the Hebrew sense. The LXX also renders va-yappel with epébalen ("cast upon/threw upon"), a non-causative verb form, differing from the Hebrew hiphil structure which explicitly marks God as causing the sleep event.