Genesis 31:45

Summary

The verse narrates a single continuous action: Jacob takes a stone and sets it up as a standing pillar. The two verbs are linked in narrative sequence, describing one deliberate act with two stages — taking and raising.

Key words

• yiqqach ("he took", H3947G) — qal narrative form, marking the first sequential action ("and then he took").
• Ya'aqov ("Jacob", H3290) — proper name, subject of both verbs in the verse.
• 'aven ("a stone", H0068G) — feminine singular noun, the object taken.
• yerime ("he raised up", H7311A) — hiphil (causative) narrative form: the causative stem indicates Jacob causes the stone to stand, not that it stands on its own.
• matzevah ("a pillar", H4676) — feminine singular noun, functioning as the predicate complement describing what the stone becomes/is set up as.

What the text says

The verse consists of two clauses joined by the narrative vav (H9001), a construction that chains actions in temporal sequence: "and he took... and he raised it." Both main verbs — yiqqach ("he took", H3947G) and yerime ("he raised up", H7311A) — are in the qal and hiphil narrative forms respectively, a pattern typical of Hebrew storytelling that presents events as a chain of consecutive completed actions rather than as separate independent statements.

The second verb, yerime, is in the hiphil (causative) stem, built from a root meaning "to be high" but here meaning "to cause to be high" — that is, Jacob does not merely place the stone but actively causes it to stand upright. This verb also carries a pronominal suffix ha ("it/her", H9034), referring back to the feminine noun 'aven ("a stone", H0068G), so the sentence reads literally "and he raised it" before naming what it becomes.

The final word, matzevah ("a pillar", H4676), stands without a connecting verb "to be" — a common feature of Hebrew syntax — functioning as a predicate noun that identifies the result of the action: the stone becomes a matzevah. The grammar thus presents the stone's transformation from raw object ('aven) to erected marker (matzevah) as the outcome of Jacob's two consecutive actions.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew verbs somewhat differently in structure: it uses a participle (λαβὼν, "having taken") for the first action and a single finite verb (ἔστησεν, "he set up") for the second, subordinating "taking" to "setting up" rather than presenting them as two equally sequential narrative actions as the Hebrew does. The Vulgate follows a similar two-verb structure to the Hebrew ("tulit... et erexit"), preserving the sequential pattern more closely than the LXX's participial construction.