Genesis 24:32

Summary

The verse narrates the man's arrival at the house, where the camels are unharnessed, fed with straw and fodder, and water is provided to wash the feet of the man and of those accompanying him.

Key words

• va-yavo ("and he went/came", H0935G) — qal narrative form, continuing the sequential chain of action typical of Hebrew narrative prose.
• va-yfattach ("and he unharnessed", H6605A) — piel (intensive) stem, indicating a more thorough or effortful action than a simple qal would convey, applied to the camels.
• ha-gemallim ("the camels", H1581) — masculine/common plural noun with definite article, repeated twice (lines 11 and 18) as the recipients of unharnessing and feeding.
• ragel-av ("his feet", H7272 + suffix) — feminine dual construct noun with pronominal suffix "his," referring to the feet of "the man" mentioned earlier in the verse.
• ragelei ha-anashim ("the feet of the men", H7272 construct + H0582) — the same dual construct noun in a construct chain with "the men," marking whose feet are washed alongside the first man's.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of four sequential narrative verbs — va-yavo ("he went"), va-yfattach ("he unharnessed"), va-yitten ("he gave") — each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), which strings the actions together in temporal succession without needing separate connecting words. The subject throughout is "the man" (ha-ish, H0376G) introduced at the start; Hebrew grammar allows this single subject to carry through multiple verbs without repeating the noun.

The clause describing water is elliptical: after u-mayim ("and water", H4325G), the text does not repeat a verb of giving, but moves directly to the infinitive lirchotz ("to wash", H7364), meaning the water's purpose is stated through the infinitive construction "to wash" rather than through an explicit verb like "gave." The feet mentioned belong first to the man himself, marked by the dual noun raglav ("his feet", H7272 + suffix H9023), and then to "the men who were with him," expressed through a construct chain ragelei ha-anashim ("the feet of the men", H7272 + H0582) followed by the relative clause asher ito ("who [were] with him", H0834A + H0854 + H9033).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text does not name a subject for the action of unharnessing the camels beyond "the man" already introduced (va-yfattach, "he unharnessed"). The LXX renders this with the third-person singular apesaxen ("he unharnessed"), consistent with the Hebrew subject. However, the Spanish RV1909 and SBLIBRE versions supply "Labán" as the explicit subject of this action, a specification not present in the Hebrew wording itself, which uses only the implied subject carried from ha-ish ("the man").