Genesis 31:47

Summary

The verse records that Laban and Jacob each name the same location, but in their own languages: Laban calls it Yegar Sahadutha (Aramaic), while Jacob calls it Gal'ed (Hebrew). Both names refer to the same place and carry a related meaning tied to witness/testimony.

Key words

• va-yiqra — va ("and", H9001) + yiqra ("he called", H7121H): narrative vav plus qal verb, marking this as the next event in the sequence — "and he called."
• lo (H9033): pronominal suffix "it/to it," attached to the preposition, indicating the object being named (the place).
• Laban (H3837A): proper name, subject of the first naming action.
• Yegar Shahaduta (H3026A/H3026B): a two-part proper name, transliterated rather than translated in the Hebrew text — it functions as a place-name in what the data marks as a non-Hebrew form.
• qara (H7121H): the same verb root as yiqra, but here in perfect form without the narrative vav — "he called," describing Jacob's parallel act of naming.
• Gal'ed (H1567): proper name, the Hebrew-form place-name Jacob assigns.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002). The first clause uses va-yiqra with the narrative vav, continuing the story's main verbal chain: "and Laban called it Yegar Sahadutha." The second clause shifts to qara without the vav-consecutive form — a perfect verb standing outside the main narrative chain, which places Jacob's action in a parallel, contrastive position rather than as the next sequential event. This grammatical shift mirrors the content: two people, two acts of naming, presented side by side rather than as one continuing after the other.

Both clauses use the same verb root, qara ("to call", H7121H), first in the vav-consecutive narrative form for Laban, then in a plain perfect form for Jacob. The repetition of the verb underlines that both figures perform the identical act — naming the site — while the change in verbal form marks a structural pause, setting Jacob's naming apart from Laban's within the sentence.

The place-names themselves differ in linguistic origin as reflected in the data: Yegar Sahadutha (H3026A/H3026B) is transliterated as a distinct proper name, while Gal'ed (H1567) is given as a separate proper name for Jacob's naming, without further glossing.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) adds an explanatory note not present in the Hebrew or the word-by-word data: "uterque juxta proprietatem linguæ suæ" ("each according to the property of his own language"), explicitly framing the two names as arising from different languages. The Hebrew text itself, per the data given, does not contain this explanatory phrase — it simply presents the two naming acts in sequence. The LXX renders the place-name content descriptively as "βουνὸς μάρτυς" ("hill of witness") and "βουνὸς μαρτυρεῖ" ("the hill testifies") rather than transliterating the proper names as the Hebrew and modern versions (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) do.