Genesis 3:13

Summary

Yehovah God questions the woman about what she has done, and she responds by attributing her action to the serpent's deception, stating that it deceived her and she ate. The verse consists of two parallel speech exchanges, each introduced by the verb "to say."

Key words

• mah-zot ("what is this", H4100 + H2063) — the interrogative mah combined with the demonstrative zot forms a compact accusatory question, literally "what-this have-you-done."
• 'asit ("you have done", H6213A) — qal perfect, second person feminine singular, marking the action as completed; the perfect aspect frames the deed as a finished fact being examined.
• hishi'ani ("it deceived me", H5377) — hiphil (causative) perfect, third person masculine, with the pronominal suffix -ni ("me", H9030) attached directly to the verb; the hiphil stem indicates the serpent caused a state of deception in the woman.
• va'okhel ("and I ate", H0398) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), first person; this construction chains the eating as the next event following the deception, presented as sequential narrative action rather than an isolated statement.
• hanachash ("the snake", H5175) — definite noun with the article ha- (H9009), specifying "the snake" as the same entity previously introduced in the narrative.

What the text says

The verse is built as a symmetrical exchange: va-yomer ("and he said," H0559) opens Yehovah's question, and va-tomer ("and she said," same root H0559) opens the woman's reply, using the same verb in masculine and feminine narrative forms respectively. This grammatical parallel places question and answer in balanced structure within the narrative sequence.

The divine question uses mah-zot 'asit, combining the interrogative mah ("what") with the demonstrative zot ("this") into a fixed idiomatic question form, followed by the qal perfect 'asit ("you have done"), which treats the woman's action as a completed event to be accounted for.

The woman's answer places hanachash ("the snake") as the grammatical subject at the front of her sentence, followed by hishi'ani, a hiphil perfect verb with causative force — the snake is presented as the agent causing her state of being deceived. The suffix -ni ("me") attaches this causation directly to her. Her sentence closes with va'okhel ("and I ate"), a vav-consecutive form that narratively sequences her eating as following from the deception, mirroring the same narrative chaining pattern (va- + verb) used throughout the verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mah-zot 'asit as "Τί τοῦτο ἐποίησας" ("What is this you have done"), closely following the Hebrew interrogative-demonstrative structure. The Vulgate instead uses "Quare hoc fecisti" ("Why have you done this"), replacing the Hebrew's "what" (mah) with "why" (Quare), shifting the question from identifying the deed to seeking its cause. The Hebrew hishi'ani (hiphil, "caused me to be deceived") is rendered by the LXX as ἠπάτησέν ("deceived") and by the Vulgate as "decepit" ("deceived"), both using simple active verbs without explicitly marking the causative nuance present in the Hebrew stem.