Genesis 29:26

Summary

Laban responds to Jacob's complaint by stating that in his place it is not the custom to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. The verse justifies the substitution of Leah for Rachel by appealing to local practice.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — narrative qal verb with prefixed vav, marking the next event in the story sequence: Laban's spoken response.
• lo ("not", H3808) — simple negation, directly negating the verb that follows.
• ye'aseh ("it is done", H6213A) — niphal (passive) imperfect: the action is expressed without a stated agent, framing the practice as an impersonal custom rather than something a specific person does.
• bi-mqomenu ("in our place", H4725 + suffix) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "our," anchoring the custom to a specific locality ("our place"), which the verb ye'aseh modifies.
• ha-tze'irah / ha-bekhirah ("the young [one]", H6810 / "the firstborn", H1067) — feminine singular adjective and noun, both with the definite article, contrasting the younger and the elder (firstborn) daughter.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative formula va-yomer Lavan ("and Laban said"), introducing direct speech. The core clause is lo ye'aseh khen bi-mqomenu — "it is not done thus in our place." The verb ye'aseh is niphal, a passive/reflexive stem, which removes any named subject performing the action; the practice is presented as how things simply "are done" in that location, rather than as a rule attributed to a person. The adverb khen ("thus") points back to the situation Jacob has just objected to.

The purpose clause la-tet ha-tze'irah lifnei ha-bekhirah ("to give the young one before the face of the firstborn") uses the qal infinitive tet ("to give") governed by the preposition la, expressing the action that is not customary. The phrase lifnei ("before," literally "to the face of") is built from the construct noun penei ("face of," plural construct) plus preposition, a common Hebrew idiom for spatial or sequential priority — here indicating precedence in marriage order rather than physical position. The contrast between ha-tze'irah ("the young one") and ha-bekhirah ("the firstborn") is marked by the definite article on both, treating them as the specific, already-known daughters from the narrative context (Rachel and Leah), without naming them directly in this verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the impersonal niphal ye'aseh... ken with ouk houtōs ("not thus"), omitting an explicit verb "to be done" and shortening the construction. Where the Hebrew has lifnei ("before the face of"), the LXX uses prin ē ("before than"), a temporal comparative rather than the "face" idiom. The Vulgate paraphrases further, introducing consuetudinis ("of custom") explicitly and rendering the infinitive clause as ut minores ante tradamus ("that we hand over the younger [ones] first"), shifting to a plural verb ("we hand over") not present as a finite verb with subject in the Hebrew, where the action remains impersonal (niphal, no named agent).