Genesis 3:20

Summary

The verse reports that ha-adam ("the man", H0120) gave his wife the name Chavvah ("Eve", H2332), and provides the reason: she was to be em ("mother of", H0517) all chai ("living", H2416A).

Key words

• va-yiqra ("and he called", H7121H) — qal narrative form indicating a sequential act: the naming happens as the next event in the story line.
• ha-adam ("the man", H0120) — noun with definite article, the subject performing the naming.
• shem ("name of", H8034) — construct noun linking directly to "his wife," forming the phrase "the name of his wife."
• Chavvah ("Eve", H2332) — proper name given as the object of the naming act.
• hayetah ("she was", H1961) — qal perfect, a completed-aspect verb describing her state as already established mother, connected to the following construct phrase em kol-chai ("mother of all living", H0517/H3605/H2416A).

What the text says

The sentence divides into two parts joined by ki ("for/that", H3588A). The first part, va-yiqra ha-adam shem ishto Chavvah, is a standard narrative clause: verb-subject-object, with shem in construct governing ishto ("his wife," built from ish + suffix -o, "his"). This construct chain produces the phrase "the name of his wife," followed by the name itself, Chavvah.

The second part supplies the motive for the naming, introduced by ki. The subject is marked explicitly with the independent pronoun hi ("she", H1931), even though the verb hayetah already carries a third-person feminine subject marker; this explicit pronoun places emphasis on "she" as the one who held this status. Hayetah is a qal perfect, presenting the state as a completed fact within the narrative frame rather than as an ongoing or future condition. The predicate that follows, em kol-chai, is itself a construct chain: em ("mother of") governs kol ("every/all") which in turn governs the adjective chai ("living"), yielding "mother of every living [one]."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb hayetah is a perfect form, which the Hebrew grammatical data marks as a completed action ("she was/had been"). The Greek (LXXSWETE) uses ὅτι αὕτη μήτηρ πάντων τῶν ζώντων without an explicit past-tense copula supplied in the given text, rendering the clause more as a stated identity ("she [is] mother of all the living") than an explicitly completed past event. The Vulgate renders the clause with esset (subjunctive "would be/were"), and the modern Spanish SBLIBRE renders it as "sería" (conditional "would be"), showing a divergence in how the perfect Hebrew form is carried into these versions — some treat it as a settled past state, others cast it toward a future-oriented sense ("would be").