Genesis 31:16

Summary

Rachel and Leah tell Jacob that the wealth God took from their father now belongs to them and their children, and therefore he should do whatever God has instructed him. The verse gives the reasoning (introduced by ki, "for") behind their agreement to leave with Jacob.

Key words

• ki ("for", H3588A) — a subordinating particle introducing the justification clause that follows; it frames the whole first half of the verse as the reason for a conclusion (marked by ve'attah, "therefore").
• hitzil ("he has taken away", H5337) — hiphil (causative) perfect of the root meaning "to snatch/deliver away"; the causative stem indicates that God is the active agent removing the wealth from the father, not that it was simply lost.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — grammatically plural noun but used with singular verb agreement in this verse (hitzil, "he has taken away"; amar, "he has said"), functioning as a singular referent.
• lanu (from la- + -nu, "to/for us", H9005+H9025) — preposition with pronominal suffix, placed emphatically before the pronoun hu' ("it", H1931), stressing "to us it belongs."
• 'aseh ("do", H6213A) — qal imperative masculine singular, a direct command form addressed to Jacob, closing the verse with an instruction rather than a statement.

What the text says

The verse divides into two grammatical units linked by ve'attah ("therefore", H6258), which marks a logical transition from stated reason to conclusion. The first unit begins with ki ("for") and contains a relative clause: kol ha'osher 'asher hitzil Elohim me'avinu ("all the wealth that God has taken away from our father"). The predicate of this clause is delayed until lanu hu' ("to us it [is/belongs]"), with the pronoun hu' ("it") serving as a copula-like element linking the subject (the wealth) to the prepositional phrase lanu ("to us"). The construct chains khol-ha'osher ("all of-the-wealth") and me'avinu ("from-our-father") show typical Hebrew possessive/relational linking without a separate word for "of."

The second unit repeats the structure kol 'asher amar Elohim eleikha ("all that God has said to you"), again using a relative clause with 'asher ("that/which") governed by kol ("all"). This clause is not a full sentence but an object fronted before the final imperative 'aseh ("do"), giving the sentence the sense "whatever God has said to you — do [it]." The verb hitzil (hiphil) in the first clause and amar (qal) in the second both appear as perfect forms describing completed past actions attributed to Elohim, which here takes singular verbal agreement despite its plural morphology.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hitzil ("he has taken away") with apheilato ("he took away/removed"), matching the sense of removal but using a different verb root than the Hebrew hiphil form. The Vulgate's tulit... et eas tradidit ("took... and delivered/handed them over") adds an explicit second verb, "delivered," not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew text, making explicit the transfer of possession that the Hebrew expresses more compactly through lanu hu' ("to us it [belongs]").