Genesis 31:46

Summary

Jacob instructs his kinsmen to gather stones; they collect stones, build a heap, and eat a meal there beside the heap. The verse narrates a sequence of four actions joined by the Hebrew narrative pattern: speaking, gathering, building, and eating.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal narrative form, marking the first link in the chain of sequential past actions.
• le-'echav ("to his relatives", H0251H) — masculine plural noun in construct with the pronominal suffix va ("his"), designating the group Jacob addresses.
• liqtu ("gather", H3950) — qal masculine plural imperative, the direct command given to the group.
• gal ("heap", H1530G) — masculine singular noun, appearing twice: first as the object built (ya'asu-gal, "they made a heap"), then with the definite article ha-gal ("the heap") as the location of the meal.
• sham ("there", H8033G) — adverb specifying the site of the eating as the very place where the heap now stands.

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on the narrative vav construction (va- prefixed to verbs), which chains four actions into a single continuous sequence: va-yomer ("and he said"), va-yiqchu ("and they took"), va-ya'asu ("and they made"), va-yokhlu ("and they ate"). This chain moves the story forward step by step without interruption, a structural feature of Biblical Hebrew narrative that is often smoothed out in translation into separate sentences connected by "so" or semicolons.

Jacob's speech itself is compact: the imperative liqtu ("gather", H3950) is addressed le-'echav ("to his relatives", H0251H), a plural construct noun with a possessive suffix that identifies the addressees without further elaboration. The word avanim ("stones", H0068G) appears twice — once as the object of the command and once as the object actually taken — reinforcing that the command is carried out exactly as given. The noun gal ("heap", H1530G) also recurs: it is first the product of the action ya'asu ("they made"), then reappears with the definite article ha-gal ("the heap") as the fixed location where eating occurs, marked by sham ("there", H8033G) and the preposition 'al ("at", H5921A). This repetition of avanim and gal across clauses ties the actions tightly together grammatically, showing that the stones gathered are the same stones made into the same heap beside which the meal takes place.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders gal as βουνόν ("mound/hill"), consistent across its occurrences, matching the Hebrew's repeated noun. The Vulgate uses tumulum ("mound") for gal but does not include a separate word corresponding to sham ("there", H8033G); it simply states they ate "super eum" ("upon it"), collapsing the adverb and preposition into one phrase referring back to the mound.