Genesis 24:50

Summary

Laban and Bethuel respond to Abraham's servant, declaring that the matter comes from Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) and that they have no power to speak against it. The verse uses a Hebrew idiom pairing opposite terms — "evil or good" — to express total lack of choice in the matter.

Key words

• yaan ("he answered", H6030B) — qal narrative verb in singular form, though its grammatical subject (Laban and Bethuel) is plural; Hebrew narrative sometimes uses a singular verb before a compound subject introduced by va.
• yatza ("it has come out", H3318G) — qal perfect, marking the matter as a completed action: the decision has already left Yehovah's domain and is now fixed.
• nukhal ("we are able", H3201) — qal imperfect negated by lo ("not", H3808), expressing an ongoing incapacity rather than a single completed refusal.
• daber ("to speak", H1696G) — piel infinitive, an intensive verbal stem used here for the act of speaking/responding.
• ra ("evil", H7451A) and tov ("good", H2896A) — paired adjectives joined by 'ov ("or", H0176A), forming a merism (two opposites naming a whole range).

What the text says

The sentence opens with va-yaan ("and he answered") followed immediately by the compound subject Laban u-Vetuel ("Laban and Bethuel"), then shifts to the plural verb va-yomru ("and they said") for the actual speech. This sequence — singular verb, then plural verb — reflects a common Hebrew narrative pattern where the initial verb of speaking can appear before the full subject is stated, even when that subject is plural.

The core statement, me-Yehovah yatza ha-davar ("from Yehovah has gone out the matter", H3068G/H3318G/H1697I), uses the qal perfect yatza to present the outcome as something already accomplished and no longer open to intervention. The clause that follows, lo nukhal daber eleikha ra o tov ("we are not able to speak to you evil or good"), employs the merism ra... o tov (H7451A/H2896A) — two opposite terms joined by 'ov ("or") — to express a totality: not simply "we won't say something bad," but "we cannot speak at all, whether to approve or disapprove."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha-davar ("the matter", H1697I) as πρόσταυμα τοῦτο ("this ordinance/decree"), a stronger term than the neutral Hebrew "matter," and phrases the second clause with ἀντειπεῖν ("to speak against/contradict") rather than reproducing the "evil or good" merism directly. The Vulgate renders the same clause as extra placitum ejus quidquam aliud loqui ("to speak anything else outside his good pleasure"), introducing the concept placitum ("good pleasure/decision") which is not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew text, where the idiom is built solely from the pair ra / tov.