Genesis 29:13

Summary

The verse narrates Laban's reaction upon hearing about Jacob's arrival: he runs to meet him, embraces and kisses him, brings him home, and Jacob then recounts to him everything that had happened.

Key words

• sh.Mo.a' ("heard", H8085G) — qal infinitive construct governed by the preposition khi ("when"), forming the temporal clause "when Laban heard."
• She.ma' ("report of", H8088B) — a noun in construct state, built from the same root as sh.Mo.a'; it denotes what was heard, i.e., "the report/news of Jacob."
• y.cha.bek ("he embraced", H2263) — piel stem, marking an intensive or emphatic action, followed by lo ("to him") rather than a direct object.
• y.na.shek ("he kissed", H5401A) — piel stem, same intensive pattern, also constructed with lo ("to him").
• y.sa.Per ("he recounted", H5608A) — piel stem, causative-intensive sense of "telling in detail," introducing Jacob's account to Laban.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative formula va-y.Hi ("and it was") followed by a temporal clause built with khi + the infinitive sh.Mo.a', meaning "when Laban heard." The object of this hearing is expressed by the noun She.ma' ("report of"), which shares its root with the verb sh.Mo.a' — the text states literally "when Laban heard the hearing/report of Jacob," using a noun and verb from the same root in sequence. This construction ties the act of perception directly to its content.

The following actions — running, embracing, kissing, bringing home — are chained by the narrative vav pattern, each verb marking a discrete sequential event. The verbs for embracing (y.cha.bek) and kissing (y.na.shek) are in the piel stem, an intensive verbal pattern, and both use the preposition-plus-suffix construction "to him" (lo) instead of taking Jacob as a direct object — a common way in Biblical Hebrew to express these physical gestures. The final verb, y.sa.Per ("he recounted"), also piel, introduces Jacob's report of "all these things" (kol ha-devarim ha-'elleh), referring back to preceding narrated events.

Differences between versions

Where the Hebrew has She.ma' ("report of," from the same root as "hear"), the LXX renders it as to onoma ("the name") of Jacob, losing the wordplay between hearing and report present in the Hebrew. The Vulgate paraphrases this clause as "cum audisset venisse Jacob" ("when he had heard that Jacob had come"), which does not correspond directly to either the Hebrew noun-verb pairing or the LXX's "name."