Genesis 28:16

Summary

The verse narrates Jacob's awakening from sleep and his immediate declaration upon realizing where he is. He affirms that Yehovah is present in "this place," and admits that he had not previously perceived it. The sentence combines narrative action (awakening, speaking) with a direct quotation expressing surprised recognition.

Key words

• vayyiqats ("he awoke", H3364) — qal narrative form, marking the sequential story action "and then he awoke."
• shenato ("his sleep", H8142) — feminine singular noun in construct with the pronominal suffix -o ("his"), forming "his sleep," the state from which Jacob rouses.
• akhen ("truly", H0403) — an interjection introducing Jacob's statement, signaling emphasis or realization rather than mere assertion.
• yesh ("there [is]", H3426) — a particle of existence (glossed here as a cardinal/common-gender form) asserting presence, "there is."
• yada'ti ("I realized/knew", H3045) — qal perfect, first person, denoting a completed state of (not) knowing prior to the awakening.

What the text says

The verse opens with two chained narrative clauses using the vav-consecutive construction: vayyiqats ("and he awoke") followed by vayyomer ("and he said"), the standard Hebrew narrative sequence marking one action following another. Jacob's direct speech begins with akhen ("truly"), an interjection that frames the following clause as a realization rather than a neutral report. The clause yesh Yehovah ba-maqom ha-zeh uses the existential particle yesh ("there is") plus the divine name and a prepositional phrase "in the place, the this" (ba-maqom ha-zeh), literally "there is Yehovah in this place." The definite article on ha-zeh ("this") ties the statement to a specific, previously mentioned location.

The final clause, ve-anokhi lo yada'ti ("and I, not I-knew"), places the independent pronoun anokhi ("I") before the negated perfect verb yada'ti, a construction that in Hebrew narrative syntax gives emphasis to the subject "I" in contrast to what has just been stated about the place. The perfect aspect of yada'ti indicates a completed state of not-knowing that held prior to the moment of speaking — his lack of awareness is presented as a settled fact of the past, now corrected by the immediate context of his statement.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text names the divine title explicitly as Yehovah (H3068G), which the LXX renders as kyrios ("Lord") and the Vulgate as Dominus ("Lord"), both replacing the tetragrammaton with a generic title rather than transliterating the name. The LXX's introductory hoti ("that") frames Jacob's statement as reported content within the speech verb, a connective not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew, which instead uses the interjection akhen ("truly") to open direct speech.