Genesis 31:39

Summary

Jacob tells Laban that he never brought him a terephah ("torn animal", H2966) to cover a loss, but instead absorbed the cost himself, whether the animal disappeared by day or by night. The verse contrasts what Jacob did not do (present a torn carcass as proof) with what he repeatedly did do (personally compensate Laban for stolen animals).

Key words

• teraphah ("a torn animal", H2966) — a feminine singular noun naming carcasses killed by predators, which by custom would not obligate a shepherd to repay the owner.
• hevé'ti ("I brought", H0935) — hiphil (causative) perfect, marking a completed, categorical action: Jacob states flatly that this never happened, not that it rarely happened.
• achattennah ("I bore the loss of it", H2398) — piel imperfect with 3fs suffix "her" (referring to the lost animal); the imperfect here expresses habitual, repeated past action rather than a future event — "I used to bear the loss."
• tevaqshennah ("you sought it", H1245) — piel imperfect with 3fs suffix, mirroring the previous verb's habitual aspect: Laban's repeated demand for restitution "from my hand" (miyadi, H3027+H9020, "from my hand/my own resources").
• genuvti ("stolen of", H1589) — qal passive participle in construct form, used twice (once with yom, "day", H3117, once with laylah, "night", H3915), creating a merism that spans the full 24-hour cycle of Jacob's watch.

What the text says

The sentence is built on a contrast introduced by lo' ("not", H3808): Jacob denies ever presenting Laban with a terephah as an excuse for a missing animal. The verbs achattennah and tevaqshennah are both piel imperfects, a form that in narrated past context conveys repeated or customary action — Jacob habitually covered losses himself, and Laban habitually demanded repayment "from my hand." The phrase genuvti yom... genuvti laylah uses the same passive participle twice in construct form, joined by u- ("and", H9002), to express totality: animals stolen at any hour, day or night, were charged to Jacob without exception.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete text as given) repeats "κλέμματα ἡμέρας" ("things stolen by day") twice before adding "κλέμματα τῆς νυκτός" ("of the night"), where the Hebrew presents a clean day/night pairing (yom/laylah) — the repetition in the Greek does not match the balanced merism of the Hebrew. The Vulgate collapses the Hebrew's two-part construct phrase into a single general clause, "quidquid furto peribat" ("whatever was lost by theft"), without explicitly separating day from night, whereas the Hebrew marks both temporal spans distinctly through the repeated participle genuvti.