Genesis 30:9

Summary

Genesis 30:9 narrates that Leah, having observed that she had stopped bearing children, took her maidservant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. The verse follows the pattern already established with Rachel and Bilhah, using the same sequence of perception, action, and transfer.

Key words

• Te.re' ("she saw", H7200G) — qal narrative form of the verb "to see," opening the verse and marking Leah as the subject who perceives a situation, triggering her subsequent action.
• 'a.me.Dah ("she had stopped", H5975G) — qal perfect, indicating a completed state prior to the main narrative action; grammatically it explains the reason (ki, H3588A) for what Leah "saw."
• Le.det ("bearing children", H3205) — infinitive form following the preposition mi. ("from", H9006); together mi.lledet expresses "from bearing," i.e., "from continuing to bear."
• ti.Kach ("she took", H3947G) — qal narrative, continuing the chain of sequential actions with the vav-consecutive construction typical of Hebrew narrative prose.
• shif.cha.Ta + h ("her maidservant", H8198 + H9024) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, specifying Zilpah's relationship to Leah as her personal maidservant.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — Te.re' ("she saw"), ti.Kach ("she took"), ti.Ten ("she gave") — each introduced by the narrative va (H9001), which links the clauses sequentially: seeing leads to taking, which leads to giving. This chain structure is a hallmark of Hebrew narrative style, presenting the events as a continuous, causally linked sequence rather than as isolated statements.

The subordinate clause ki 'a.me.Dah mi.Lledet ("that she had stopped from bearing") uses the perfect verb 'a.me.Dah to mark a completed prior condition, explaining the motivation behind Leah's action. The construction mi. + infinitive Le.det ("from bearing") is a common Hebrew idiom for expressing cessation of an ongoing activity — literally "she stood from bearing," i.e., she ceased to bear children.

The double use of the direct object marker 'et / 'o.Ta (H0853/H9034), untranslated but grammatically required, marks both "Zilpah" and "her" (referring back to Zilpah) as the direct objects of "took" and "gave" respectively, reinforcing the grammatical clarity of who is being transferred to whom.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ti.Ten ("she gave") with ἔδωκεν... Ιακὼβ γυναῖκα ("gave to Jacob as wife"), omitting an equivalent for the preposition le- ("to") before "Jacob" found twice in the Hebrew (le.yaʿaqov, le.'ishah), collapsing the double prepositional phrase into a simpler dative + accusative construction. The Vulgate similarly compresses the phrase as marito tradidit ("handed over to her husband"), replacing the proper name "Jacob" with the descriptive term "husband," a shift not present in the Hebrew, which explicitly names ya.'a.Ko ("Jacob", H3290).