Genesis 30:38

Summary

The verse describes Jacob placing the peeled branches he had prepared in the watering troughs, positioned so the flocks would see them while drinking. The text then states that the flocks mated when they came to drink at these troughs.

Key words

va-yaTzeg ("and he placed", H3322) — hiphil narrative form, a causative verb: he "caused to stand" or set the branches in place, not merely put them down.

piTzel ("he had stripped", H6478) — piel perfect, an intensive completed action, describing the peeling done to the branches before this scene, referring back to earlier preparation.

shikaTot ("watering channels of", H8268) — feminine plural construct, linking directly to ha-Mayim ("the water", H4325G) that follows — "watering channels of the water."

taVona ("they came", H0935G) — qal imperfect feminine plural, describing the flocks' recurring or ongoing action of coming to drink.

yeChamnah ("they mated", H3179) — qal narrative (vav-consecutive) feminine plural, marking the next sequential event in the story after the flocks' arrival.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a chain of narrative verbs connected by the va- ("and") prefix (H9001): va-yaTzeg ("and he placed") and later va-yeChamnah ("and they mated"). This vav-consecutive structure presents the actions as a sequence of events in the story rather than as simultaneous or general statements. Between these two main verbs, the text inserts two relative clauses introduced by 'aSher ("which", H0834A): one describing the branches ("which he had stripped"), and one describing the troughs ("which the flock came to drink"). This layering allows the sentence to specify both the object (branches) and the location (troughs) before returning to the main narrative action.

The phrase le-Nokhach ha-Tzon ("before the flock", H5227 + H6629G) uses a construct form indicating spatial orientation — the branches are positioned facing or in front of the flock. The final clause repeats the infinitive lishTot ("to drink", H8354) twice — once describing the flocks' general coming to drink near the branches, and again in be-vo'An lishTot ("when they came to drink") — tying the mating action (yeChamnah) temporally to the moment of drinking, using the infinitive construct with a pronominal suffix -an ("their", H9049) to mark the subject of "their coming."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew va-yeChamnah ("they mated", H3179) with ἐνκισσήσωσιν, tied to a purpose clause (ἵνα... ἐνκισσήσωσιν, "so that they might conceive/mate"), framing the outcome as intentional rather than simply sequential as the Hebrew vav-consecutive narrative presents it. The Vulgate similarly uses "ut... conciperent" ("so that they might conceive"), also expressing purpose, where the Hebrew text's va- construction states the mating as a narrated event following the drinking, without an explicit purpose marker equivalent to Greek ἵνα or Latin ut.