Genesis 3:11

Summary

Genesis 3:11 records two questions posed to the man: first, who informed him of his nakedness, and second, whether he ate from the specific tree he had been commanded not to eat from. The verse closes the narrator's inquiry with a repetition of the verb "to eat," framing the command and the transgression in parallel.

Key words

• mi ("who?", H4310) — interrogative pronoun opening the first question; it seeks the source of the man's knowledge rather than the fact itself.
• higgid ("did he tell", H5046) — hiphil (causative) perfect: someone caused information to be reported to the man; the causative stem implies an external agent transmitting knowledge, not the man discovering it himself.
• tzivvitikha ("I commanded you", H6680) — piel (intensive) perfect, first person; marks a completed, deliberate act of command, with the object suffix -kha ("you") attached directly to the verb.
• 'akhol ("to eat", H0398) — qal infinitive, governed by lebilti ("not", H1115) + le- ("to"), forming the negative purpose clause "so as not to eat."
• 'akhalta ("you have eaten", H0398) — same root as 'akhol, now qal perfect second person; the repetition of the root across the infinitive and the finite verb creates a rhetorical echo between the prohibition and the reported action.

What the text says

The verse contains two distinct interrogative clauses joined without a connecting particle beyond the narrative va ("and", H9001) that opens the verse. The first clause, mi higgid lekha ki 'eirom 'attah ("who told you that you were naked"), uses the interrogative mi ("who?", H4310) with the hiphil verb higgid ("did he tell", H5046), a causative form suggesting that the man's awareness of nakedness came from an external report rather than direct perception. The second clause begins with the interrogative particle ha- (H9008) attached to min ("from", H4480A), producing "is it from the tree...?" — a yes/no question distinct grammatically from the first mi-question.

The relative clause 'asher tzivvitikha ("which I commanded you", H0834A + H6680) identifies the tree by referring back to the prior command, using the piel perfect to stress the deliberateness of that command. The final structure pairs the infinitive 'akhol ("to eat", H0398) inside the negative purpose phrase lebilti... 'akhol mimmenu ("not to eat from it") with the perfect 'akhalta ("you have eaten", H0398) — the same root appearing twice, first as prohibition, then as completed action, producing a verbal echo that a translation using two different English verbs would not preserve.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew presents two separate interrogative clauses: the mi-question and the ha-min-question. The LXX renders the second clause with εἰ μὴ ("if not," "unless"), and the Vulgate with nisi quod ("except that"), both merging what is grammatically a second question in the Hebrew into a single continuous sentence structure ("who told you... unless/except that you ate..."). This shifts the two-question form of the Hebrew into a one-question-plus-conditional-clause form in Greek and Latin.