Genesis 29:34

Summary

Genesis 29:34 narrates that Leah conceived and bore a third son, and upon his birth she stated her hope that her husband would now become attached to her, since she had borne him three sons. The verse closes with the naming of the child as Levi (H3878), linked by the text to that statement.

Key words

• Tahar ("she conceived", H2029) — qal narrative verb, third person feminine, continuing the chain of consecutive actions that structures the birth-narrative sequence.
• yillaveh ("he will join himself", H3867A) — niphal imperfect, third person masculine. The niphal stem gives a passive/reflexive nuance ("be joined" / "attach himself"), and the imperfect marks it as an anticipated or future action rather than a completed one.
• ishi ("my husband", H0376H) — construct noun with 1st person suffix ("husband of me"), the grammatical subject of yillaveh.
• yaladti ("I have borne", H3205) — qal perfect, first person, marking completed action; contrasts grammatically with the imperfect yillaveh, setting a completed cause against an anticipated result.
• Levi (H3878) — proper name given at the close of the verse, presented as the outcome of Leah's statement introduced by al-ken ("therefore", H3651C).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-tahar, va-teled, va-tomer — each marked "and then," which is the standard Hebrew device for sequential storytelling: conception, birth, and speech follow one another without interruption. Leah's quoted speech contains its own internal grammar: the perfect yaladti ("I have borne") states a completed fact, while the niphal imperfect yillaveh expresses a resulting or hoped-for future/ongoing state ("he will join himself" or "he will become attached"). The niphal stem itself carries a reflexive/passive sense — the husband is grammatically the one undergoing or performing the "joining," not Leah acting on him directly.

The final clause uses al-ken ("therefore", H3651C) plus kara shemo ("he called his name", H7121H + H8034 construct + suffix) to link the naming of the child explicitly to the preceding statement. The Hebrew consonantal shape of Levi (H3878) is presented in proximity to the root underlying yillaveh (H3867A), and the narrative sets Leah's words about her husband "joining" as the stated reason for the name, though the text does not itself analyze the etymology beyond this narrative link.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yillaveh with a prepositional phrase, πρὸς ἐμοῦ ἔσται ὁ ἀνήρ μου ("my husband will be toward/with me"), using a future "to be" construction rather than a verb of "joining." The Vulgate uses copulabitur mihi ("will be joined/coupled to me"), preserving the sense of attachment more closely to the Hebrew niphal. The Vulgate also adds tertio ("a third time") and alium filium ("another son"), making explicit the ordinal count of sons that the Hebrew leaves implicit through shelishah banim ("three sons") stated later in Leah's own speech rather than in the narrator's voice.