Genesis 31:38

Summary

Jacob states that during twenty years spent with Laban, his flocks did not suffer miscarriages, and he did not consume the rams belonging to Laban's flock. The verse is part of Jacob's self-defense recounting his conduct as a shepherd.

Key words

• zeh ("this", H2088) — demonstrative particle opening the clause, pointing to the duration that follows, "this twenty years."
• 'es.Rim ("twenty", H6242) — cardinal number modifying sha.Nah, forming the time expression that frames the whole statement.
• 'a.no.Khi ("I", H0595) — independent personal pronoun, adding emphasis to the subject already implied by the following prepositional phrase.
• shi.Ke.lu ("they have miscarried", H7921A) — Piel perfect, third person plural; the intensive stem here conveys the specific sense of losing young through miscarriage, completed (or in this context, never-occurring) action.
• 'a.Khal.ti ("I have eaten", H0398) — Qal perfect, first person singular, a simple completed action verb describing what Jacob claims he did not do.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with zeh ("this") followed by the number 'es.Rim ("twenty") and the noun sha.Nah ("year"), a construction that in Hebrew places the time span at the very front of the utterance before the speaker is even named. Only after establishing "this twenty years" does the text introduce 'a.no.Khi ("I") and 'i.Ma-kh ("with you"), literally "I [have been] with you." This word order foregrounds the duration itself rather than the subject, a nuance not preserved when translations begin with "I have been with you for twenty years."

The second half of the verse contains two parallel clauses, each built the same way: a construct noun phrase (re.che.Lei-kha "your ewes," 'i.Zei-kha "your female goats," 'ei.Lei tzo.ne-kha "the rams of your flock") followed by the negation lo' and a perfect verb. The verb shi.Ke.lu is in the Piel stem, which here carries the sense "to miscarry" or "to lose young," distinct from a simple Qal action verb. The final verb, 'a.Khal.ti ("I have eaten"), is Qal perfect first person singular, shifting the grammatical subject from the animals (third person plural) back to Jacob himself, closing the verse with his own claimed abstention.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shi.Ke.lu ("they have miscarried") with ἠτεκνώθησαν ("were made childless/barren"), a passive form that shifts the sense slightly from an active miscarriage to a resulting state of barrenness. The Vulgate similarly uses "steriles non fuerunt" ("were not sterile"), describing a condition rather than the event of losing young that the Hebrew Piel verb denotes. The Hebrew 'ei.Lei tzo.ne-kha ("rams of your flock") is rendered by the LXX as κριοὺς τῶν προβάτων σου ("rams of your sheep"), narrowing "flock" (tzo'n, a general term covering both sheep and goats) to "sheep" specifically.