Genesis 31:32

Summary

Jacob declares that whoever is found with Laban's elohim ("gods", H0430J) will not live, invites Laban to search his possessions in front of the kinsmen, and take back whatever is his. The narrator then notes that Jacob did not know Rachel had stolen the elohim.

Key words

tim.Tza' ("you will find", H4672) — qal imperfect, expressing an open, future/hypothetical condition tied to the relative asher ("whom", H0834A): "whomever you find."

yich.Yeh ("he will live", H2421) — qal imperfect negated by lo' ("not", H3808), forming the apodosis of the conditional: "he will not live."

ha.ker-lekha ("investigate for yourself", H5234A + H9005/H9031) — hiphil imperative with a reflexive dative pronominal suffix ("for yourself"), a causative form meaning literally "cause [yourself] to recognize/discern," used here as a command to inspect.

ya.Da' ("he knew", H3045) — qal perfect, completed action, negated by lo' ("not", H3808): "he did not know," marking the narrator's aside that interrupts Jacob's direct speech.

ge.na.Va.ta ("she had stolen", H1589) — qal perfect with 3rd person feminine singular subject (Rachel) and 3rd masculine plural object suffix -am ("them", H9038), referring back to the elohim.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parts. The first is Jacob's direct speech, built as a conditional sentence: the protasis uses asher ("whom", H0834A) with the imperfect tim.Tza' ("you will find", H4672) to describe an open-ended search, and the apodosis uses the negated imperfect yich.Yeh ("he will live", H2421) to pronounce a consequence. This is followed by two imperatives — ha.ker-lekha ("investigate for yourself", H5234A) and kach-lakh ("take for yourself", H3947G) — each carrying a reflexive dative suffix (lekha, lakh, both "for yourself"), a construction that emphasizes the addressee acting on his own behalf, difficult to render fully in translation.

The second part shifts from direct speech to narration, introduced by ve-lo' yada' ("and he did not know", H3045 negated). This qal perfect indicates a completed state of ignorance at the time of the previous speech, explaining why Jacob could make such an unconditional pronouncement — the clause ki Rachel genavatam ("that Rachel had stolen them", H1589) supplies the reason, using a qal perfect for Rachel's prior action and a 3rd masculine plural suffix -am referring to the elohim mentioned earlier in the verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX inserts an introductory clause, "καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Ἰακώβ" ("and Jacob said to him"), absent from the Hebrew, which lacks any speech-formula at this point in the verse. The LXX also adds "γυνὴ αὐτοῦ" ("his wife") after "Rachel," specifying a relationship not stated in the Hebrew clause ki Rachel genavatam. The Vulgate similarly expands the search command into "scrutare, quidquid tuorum apud me inveneris" ("search whatever of yours you find with me"), rendering the terse Hebrew imperatives ha.ker-lekha and kach-lakh more discursively than the source text's short commands.