Genesis 31:48

Summary

Laban declares that the heap of stones stands as a witness between himself and Jacob, and the text explains that this is why the place was named Gal'ed ("Galeed"), a name that plays on the words for "heap" and "witness."

Key words

• gal ("heap", H1530G) — masculine singular noun with definite article ha (H9009), referring to the stone mound just built.
• 'ed ("witness", H5707) — masculine singular noun, predicate describing the function of the heap.
• beini / beinekha ("between me" / "between you", H0996G) — construct form of "between" plus pronominal suffixes (H9030, H9031), marking the two parties to the agreement.
• qara ("he called", H7121H) — qal perfect, third person, indicating a completed naming action.
• Gal'ed ("Galeed", H1567) — proper name combining gal ("heap") and 'ed ("witness"), the etiological name given to the site.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative marker va (H9001) attached to yomer ("he said", H0559), the standard Hebrew construction for introducing direct speech within a story sequence. Laban's statement itself is a nominal sentence without an explicit verb "to be": ha-gal ha-zeh 'ed beini u-veinekha ha-yom — literally "this heap [is] a witness between me and between you, the day." Hebrew regularly omits the copula "is" in present-tense identity statements, so the witness-function of the heap is asserted directly through juxtaposition of noun (gal) and predicate noun ('ed).

The phrase beini u-veinekha repeats the preposition "between" (H0996G) for each party rather than using a single shared preposition, a common Hebrew pattern when specifying two individuals separately ("between me and between you").

The final clause, introduced by the adverb 'al-ken ("therefore", H3651C), gives the etiology of the place-name. The qal perfect qara' ("he called") plus shem-o ("his name", H8034 + H9023) is a fixed formula in Hebrew narrative for naming events. The name Gal'ed (H1567) is a compound directly built from the two key nouns just used in Laban's speech — gal ("heap") and 'ed ("witness") — so the narrative explanation and the name itself share the same vocabulary, a wordplay visible only in the Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The LXX expands the Hebrew text by adding a stone pillar (ἡ στήλη) alongside the heap (ὁ βουνὸς), items not present in the Hebrew of this verse, and addresses the speech explicitly "to Jacob" (τῷ Ἰακώβ), where the Hebrew leaves the addressee unstated. The LXX also renders the resulting place-name descriptively as "heap of witness" (βουνὸς μαρτυρεῖ) rather than transliterating Gal'ed as a proper name. The Vulgate transliterates the name as "Galaad" and adds the explanatory gloss "id est, Tumulus testis" ("that is, heap of witness"), making explicit in Latin the etymological wordplay that the Hebrew conveys through shared vocabulary alone.