Genesis 31:1

Summary

Genesis 31:1 reports that Jacob heard what Laban's sons were saying about him: that he had taken everything belonging to their father, and from their father's property had built up all this wealth. The verse is framed as reported speech, introducing the complaint that motivates the following narrative.

Key words

• va-yishma' ("and he heard", H8085G) — qal narrative form; the grammatical subject "he" is not named until word 10 (Ya'aqov), so the identity of the hearer is initially implicit in the Hebrew verb form alone.
• le'mor ("saying", H0559) — infinitive construct with preposition le, the standard formula introducing direct speech; everything after this word is the sons' quoted statement.
• laqach ("he has taken", H3947G) — qal perfect, marking completed action; expresses the accusation as a finished fact from the sons' point of view.
• asher le'avinu ("that [belonged] to our father", H0834A/H0834C + H0001G) — this phrase, built from relative particle + preposition + noun with pronominal suffix -nu ("our"), occurs twice, structuring the accusation into two parallel clauses.
• kol ha-kavod ha-zeh ("all this abundance", H3605 + H3519 + H2088) — noun with double definite article and demonstrative, emphasizing the totality and specificity of the wealth in question.

What the text says

The verse opens with a bare narrative verb, va-yishma' ("and he heard"), whose subject is only grammatically implicit — Hebrew narrative style permits the subject to remain unstated until it becomes necessary, and here the name Ya'aqov (H3290) appears only inside the quoted speech (word 10), not as the explicit subject of the hearing. The object of hearing is divrei benei-Lavan ("the words of the sons of Laban"), a construct chain (noun of noun of proper name) that identifies whose speech is being reported, followed by le'mor ("saying"), which formally opens the quotation.

The quoted material itself is built on two parallel clauses using the relative construction asher le'avinu ("that [belongs] to our father"), each governed by a different verb: laqach ("he has taken") for the first, describing removal of what was the father's, and 'asah ("he has acquired/made", H6213I) for the second, describing what Jacob produced from that same source. Both verbs are qal perfects, presenting the accusation as settled, completed fact rather than ongoing process. The final phrase, kol ha-kavod ha-zeh ("all this abundance"), uses the doubled article plus demonstrative zeh ("this") to point at wealth visibly present to the speakers, functioning as the emphatic conclusion of their complaint.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb va-yishma' does not name its subject; the LXX supplies ἸΊακὼβ explicitly ("Ἤκουσεν δὲ Ἰακὼβ..."), making the subject overt where the Hebrew leaves it implicit until later in the sentence. The noun kavod ("abundance", H3519) is rendered in the LXX as δόξαν ("glory") and in the Vulgate with the adjective "inclytus" ("renowned"), both shifting the semantic field from material wealth toward reputation or honor, a nuance not present in the Hebrew term's more concrete sense of "abundance."