Genesis 28:22

Summary

Jacob declares that the stone he has set up as a pillar will become beit Elohim ("house of God", H1004B/H0430G), and he vows to give a tenth of everything God gives him. The verse closes the vow begun earlier in the chapter, moving from the naming of the stone to a commitment about future giving.

Key words

• matzevah ("a pillar", H4676) — feminine singular noun naming what the stone ('even, H0068G) has become through Jacob's action, distinct from the stone itself.
• beit Elohim ("house of God") — beit (H1004B) is masculine singular in construct form ("house of"), linking directly to Elohim (H0430G), a masculine plural noun used here for the divine name; the construct chain has no independent article, giving it a title-like quality.
• titen ("you will give", H5414G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine, expressing a future/ongoing action attributed to the addressee (God) within the relative clause asher ("that/which", H0834A).
• asser ("fully tithe", H6237) — piel infinitive, paired immediately with...
• a'asserenu ("I will tithe it", H6237) — piel imperfect, first person, same root repeated; the infinitive-plus-imperfect pairing is a common Hebrew construction that intensifies or confirms the verbal action.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002). The first clause identifies the referent — ha'even hazot ("this stone", H0068G + H2063) — through a relative clause asher samti matzevah ("which I have set up as a pillar", H0834A + H7760A + H4676), where samti is a qal perfect marking the setting-up as a completed prior action. The main verb of this clause, yihyeh ("it will be", H1961), is qal imperfect, projecting the stone's status as beit Elohim into future or ongoing time rather than stating an immediate present fact.

The second clause structures the vow itself. Khol asher titen-li ("all that you will give me") uses the qal imperfect titen to describe a future, conditional divine action. The response to this is expressed through the doubled root 'asar (H6237): the infinitive asser followed by the finite piel imperfect a'asserenu ("I will tithe it"). This infinitive-imperfect pairing repeats the same verbal root to reinforce the certainty of the action — a grammatical feature not preserved when translations render it simply as "I will surely tithe" or "I will give a tenth," since the doubling itself carries no separate lexical content beyond emphasis.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders beit Elohim as oἶκος θεοῦ ("house of God") but shifts the pronoun structure, adding ἔσται μοι ("will be to me"), a first-person dative not explicit in the Hebrew clause, which lacks an indirect object for yihyeh. The Vulgate renders yihyeh as vocabitur ("will be called"), introducing a naming sense absent from the Hebrew's simple "will be." The Vulgate also renders the doubled root asser...a'asserenu with a single verb, decimas offeram ("I will offer tithes"), losing the repetition present in the Hebrew infinitive-imperfect pairing.