Genesis 28:7

Summary

This verse states that Jacob listened to his father and his mother, and then went toward Paddan-aram. It records both his obedience to his parents' instruction and his subsequent journey.

Key words

• i.yish.Ma' ("he had listened", H8085H) — qal verb with narrative vav, presenting the action as the next event in the sequence of the story: "and he listened."
• ya.'a.Ko ("Jacob", H3290) — proper name, subject of the verb, identifying who performed the listening.
• 'a.Vi ("father", H0001G) — masculine singular construct noun with pronominal suffix v ("his"), forming "his father"; construct state links it to the following possessive.
• 'i.M ("mother", H0517) — feminine singular construct noun with suffix o ("his"), forming "his mother," paired with 'a.Vi via the conjunction ve ("and").
• i.Ye.lekh ("he had gone", H1980G) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the second sequential action: "and then he went."

What the text says

The verse is built on two verbs joined by the narrative vav construction (va-yishma' ... va-yelekh), which in Biblical Hebrew presents a chain of consecutive events: first the listening, then the going. The verb yishma' ("he listened," H8085H) takes the preposition 'el ("to," H0413) twice, once before 'aviv ("his father") and once before 'immo ("his mother"), each noun appearing in construct form with a pronominal suffix. This repetition of 'el before each parent, rather than a single preposition governing both nouns, gives each parent separate grammatical weight within the sentence.

The second clause, va-yelekh Paddenah Aram, uses the directional he suffix (H9011) attached to Paddan ("Paddan," H6307), meaning "toward Paddan," followed by Aram (H0758L) in apposition, together forming the place name "Paddan-aram." The directional he itself marks motion toward a location, a grammatical feature that some translations render simply as the place name without preserving the directional nuance embedded in the Hebrew form.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Paddan Aram as εἰς τὴν Μεσοποταμίαν ("into Mesopotamia"), a geographic equivalence rather than a transliteration of the Hebrew place name. The Vulgate similarly uses "in Syriam" ("into Syria"), diverging from the Hebrew's specific toponym Paddan-aram by substituting a broader regional name. The Hebrew's two separate instances of 'el ("to") before "father" and "mother" are collapsed in the LXX into a single construction governing both nouns (τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τῆς μητρὸς), and the Vulgate uses "parentibus suis" ("his parents") as a combined term rather than naming father and mother separately.