Genesis 2:8

Summary

The verse narrates two consecutive actions: Yehovah Elohim plants a garden in Eden, located to the east, and then places there the man he had previously formed. The Hebrew text uses two verbs in narrative sequence, followed by a relative clause referring back to the shaping of the man.

Key words

• va-yiTa' ("and he planted", H5193) — qal narrative form; the vav-consecutive marks this as the first sequential event of the passage.
• Eden ("Eden", H5731B) — proper place name, governed by the preposition be ("in", H9003).
• miQedem ("from the east", H6924G) — noun with prefixed preposition mi ("from", H9006), locating the garden relative to the compass direction.
• va-yaSem ("and he put", H7760H) — second qal narrative verb, continuing the sequence begun with va-yiTa'.
• ya-Tzar ("he had formed", H3335G) — qal perfect, marking an action completed prior to the placement, introduced by the relative particle asher ("whom", H0834A).

What the text says

The sentence is built on two narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-yiTa' ("he planted", H5193) and va-yaSem ("he put", H7760H) — both in the qal simple stem with third-person masculine singular subject, Yehovah Elohim. This chaining is a standard feature of Hebrew narrative prose: each vav-consecutive verb advances the storyline one step at a time, so the planting of the garden and the placing of the man are presented as two sequential, connected events performed by the same subject.

The location is given through a stack of prepositional phrases: be-Eden ("in Eden", H9003+H5731B) specifies the region, and mi-Qedem ("from the east", H6924G) adds directional information, both modifying gan ("a garden", H1588M).

The final clause, asher yaTzar ("whom he had formed", H0834A + H3335G), uses the relative particle asher to attach a subordinate clause to ha-Adam ("the man", H0120H). The verb yaTzar is in the perfect aspect rather than the narrative form used elsewhere in the verse — this distinguishes it as a completed, prior action: the forming of the man had already occurred before he was placed in the garden, in contrast to the sequential planting and placing actions marked by the vav-consecutive forms.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the verbs as pluperfect ("plantaverat... posuit... formaverat"), explicitly framing the planting as prior to the narrative moment, whereas the Hebrew uses vav-consecutive forms that present planting and placing as sequential main-line events, with only the forming of the man marked as antecedent via the perfect yaTzar. The Vulgate also adds "voluptatis" ("of delight") to paradisum, an interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew gan ("garden", H1588M) or the LXX's paradeisos.