Genesis 28:20

Summary

Genesis 28:20 narrates that Jacob made a vow, framed as a conditional statement addressed to God. The condition specifies three things Jacob asks for: God's presence, protection on his journey, and provision of food and clothing.

Key words

• va-yiddar ("and he vowed", H5087) — narrative vav plus qal verb form; opens the verse as the next event in the story sequence, marking Jacob's formal act of making a vow.
• nazir — not present here, but neder ("a vow", H5088) is the noun repeated after the verb (a cognate object), reinforcing the specific legal/religious nature of the act: he vowed a vow.
• 'im ("if", H0518A) — the conditional particle that opens and structures the entire remainder of the verse (and continues into v. 21-22); everything that follows is framed as a condition.
• 'elohim ("God", H0430G) — grammatically plural noun functioning as the subject of the singular verb yihyeh ("he will be", H1961), the standard construction for this term when referring to a single deity.
• shemarani ("he will protect me", H8104H) — qal sequential perfect with 1st-person suffix; continues the chain of conditions begun by yihyeh, linking "being with me" and "protecting me" as parallel requests.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb va-yiddar ("and he vowed", H5087) followed by its cognate noun neder ("a vow", H5088), a construction that in Hebrew emphasizes the formality of the act — literally "he vowed a vow." This is followed by le'mor ("saying", H0559), an infinitive that introduces direct speech, a standard narrative device to shift from third-person narration to Jacob's own words.

The content of the vow is built entirely around the particle 'im ("if", H0518A), which introduces a conditional clause. The condition contains a chain of verbs: yihyeh ("he will be", H1961, imperfect) for God's presence, followed by two sequential perfect verbs, shemarani ("he will protect me", H8104H) and natan ("he will give", H5414G), which continue the same conditional force despite their different verb form — this is the so-called "vav-consecutive" pattern where a perfect verb following an imperfect continues its modal/future sense rather than indicating past action. The journey is specified with the demonstrative ha-zeh ("this", H2088) modifying derekh ("journey", H1870L), and further defined by the relative clause 'asher 'anokhi holekh ("which I am going", H1980G, participle) — the participle expresses ongoing action, "the one going," describing Jacob's present travel. The final requests use paired infinitives, le'ekhol ("to eat", H0398) and lilbosh ("to wear", H3847), each governed by the preposition le- and specifying the purpose of the nouns lechem ("food/bread", H3899H) and beged ("clothing", H0899B).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'elohim ("God", H0430G) as "Κύριος ὁ θεὸς" (Lord God), adding a divine title (Kyrios) not present in the Hebrew, which here has only the single term 'elohim. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with simply "Deus." The Hebrew's cognate construction va-yiddar...neder ("he vowed...a vow") is rendered in Greek as ηὔξατο...εὐχὴν and in Latin as Vovit...votum, both preserving the same cognate emphasis found in the Hebrew.