Genesis 3:10

Summary

The man responds to God, explaining that he heard the sound of God's presence in the garden, became afraid, and hid because he realized he was naked. The verse presents a chain of four sequential actions: hearing, fearing, being naked, and hiding.

Key words

• kolekha ("your sound/voice", H6963) — construct noun qol ("sound") plus the 2nd person masculine singular suffix "your"; it is qol, not a separate word for "footsteps" or "voice," that the man says he heard.
• sha'ati ("I heard", H8085) — qal perfect, marking a completed action prior to the main narrative sequence; this sets up the cause for what follows.
• va'ira ("and I was afraid", H3372) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive imperfect), the first link in the chain of reactions "and then I feared."
• 'eirom ("naked", H5903) — a bare adjective with no verb "to be" attached in the Hebrew; the state of nakedness is asserted without a copula.
• 'echave ("I hid myself", H2244) — niphal narrative form, a passive/reflexive stem indicating the man acted on himself, closing the sequence of responses.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of four verbs connected by the narrative vav ("and then"): shama'ti ("I heard"), va'ira ("and I was afraid"), and va'echave ("and I hid myself"), with the adjective 'eirom ("naked") plus the pronoun 'anokhi ("I") standing between the second and third verbs as the stated cause. The particle ki ("for", H3588) introduces this cause: "I was afraid, for naked [am] I."

The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before kolekha ("your sound") signals that "your sound" is the grammatical object of shama'ti ("I heard"), a construction with no separate translation but confirming the object status of the phrase within the clause.

The final verb, 'echave ("I hid myself"), is in the niphal stem, which in this form functions reflexively — the subject undergoes the action of hiding rather than actively hiding something else, distinguishing it from a qal form that would more directly denote transitive action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders H6963 (qol, "sound/voice") with φωνήν ("voice") and adds περιπατοῦντος ("walking"), a participle not present in the Hebrew, which only has "your sound in the garden." The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with vocem tuam ... in paradiso ("your voice ... in paradise"), without the added participle. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation renders kolekha as "tus pasos" ("your steps") rather than "your voice/sound," an interpretive choice not present in the Hebrew wording itself.