Genesis 31:24

Summary

The verse reports that Elohim ("God", H0430G) came to Laban the Aramean in a nighttime dream and issued a warning: he must not speak to Jacob "from good unto bad," i.e., in either direction of good or harmful speech. The sentence is structured as a narrative report followed by direct divine speech introduced by a second narrative verb.

Key words

• va-yyavo ("and he came", H0935G) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the next event in the story sequence; the subject follows immediately.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun functioning as the grammatical subject of a singular verb, a common pattern for this divine designation in the Hebrew text.
• ba-chalom ("in the dream of", H2472) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking to ha-laylah ("the night", H3915) to specify "the dream of the night."
• hishamer ("take heed", H8104J) — niphal imperative, giving the command a reflexive/passive-toned force, roughly "guard yourself."
• pen-tedaber ("lest you should speak", H1696G) — piel imperfect after the subordinating particle pen ("lest", H6435), expressing a feared future action to be prevented.
• mi-tov ad-ra ("from good unto bad") — pairing of the adjectives tov ("good", H2896A) and ra ("bad", H7451A) joined by the prepositions min ("from") and ad ("unto"), forming a merism spanning the full range between the two poles.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative chain typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling: va-yyavo ("and he came") followed immediately by Elohim as subject, then the destination el-Laban ha-Arammi ("to Laban the Aramean"), and the temporal/locative phrase ba-chalom ha-laylah ("in the dream of the night"), where the construct chain chalom ha-laylah ties the dream specifically to that night's occurrence. A second narrative verb, va-yyomer ("and he said"), introduces the divine speech directed lo ("to him").

The command itself uses the niphal imperative hishamer lekha ("take heed to yourself"), a reflexive construction that intensifies the personal directedness of the warning — Laban is told to guard his own conduct. The content of what he must avoid is framed by pen + piel imperfect (pen-tedaber, "lest you speak"), a construction expressing a negative purpose or fear clause: the action to be prevented is speaking im-Ya'aqov ("with Jacob"). The scope of that speech is delimited by the merism mi-tov ad-ra ("from good unto bad"), pairing the two adjectives tov and ra with the prepositions "from" and "unto" to indicate the entire spectrum of possible speech, not one specific type of statement.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the merism as πονηρά ("evil things") alone, narrowing the Hebrew's two-sided mi-tov ad-ra ("from good unto bad") to a single negative term, without an explicit "good" counterpart. The Vulgate similarly renders it as aspere ("harshly"), again collapsing the pair into one qualifier rather than preserving the merism structure. Modern versions such as BSB and SBLIBRE restore the double-term construction ("either good or bad" / "buena o mala"), matching the Hebrew's tov/ra pairing more closely than the LXX or Vulgate do.