Genesis 31:6

Summary

Jacob tells Leah and Rachel that they themselves know he has served their father Laban with all his strength. The verse uses grammatical markers that specifically indicate the two women are being addressed, a nuance visible only in the Hebrew.

Key words

• 'aTenah ("you", H0859E) — feminine plural independent pronoun, explicitly marking that Jacob addresses women (Leah and Rachel), not a general "you."
• yeda'Ten ("you know", H3045) — qal perfect, feminine plural conjugation; the completed-action form frames their knowledge as an established fact, not something in progress.
• koch-i ("my strength", H3581B + suffix) — construct noun with a possessive suffix, forming the phrase be-khol-koch-i ("with all of my strength"), an intensifying construct chain.
• 'avaDti ("I have served", H5647G) — qal perfect, first person singular, expressing Jacob's completed service as a finished, bounded action.
• 'avi-Khen ("your father", H0001G + H9027) — construct noun with feminine plural suffix, again grammatically confirming that "your" refers to the women, not to a mixed or male group.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conjunction ve ("and") followed immediately by the emphatic feminine plural pronoun 'aTenah, which is grammatically redundant with the verb ending of yeda'Ten but adds rhetorical emphasis — Jacob singles out Leah and Rachel as the ones who "themselves" know his situation. This is followed by ki (H3588A), functioning here as a subordinating particle introducing the content of what they know: "that with all my strength I have served your father."

The core clause be-khol-koch-i 'avaDti uses a construct chain (khol + koch + suffix -i) to intensify the totality of Jacob's effort — literally "in all of the-strength-of-me." The verb 'avaDti is a qal perfect, marking the service as a completed, summarized action rather than an ongoing process, which fits Jacob's rhetorical purpose of presenting his past labor as a finished record he can appeal to. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) signals that 'avi ("father") is the object of the service, and the final suffix -khen again confirms the feminine plural addressees, tying the closing phrase back to the opening pronoun.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew consistently marks the addressees as feminine plural through pronoun, verb endings, and suffix ('aTenah, yeda'Ten, 'avi-khen). The Vulgate preserves this with the feminine plural pronoun ipsae ("themselves," feminine). The LXX also reflects it through autai ("they/themselves," feminine plural), though its verb oidate ("you know") and phrase tō patri hymōn ("your father") do not carry Greek's gender marking as visibly as the Hebrew suffixes do. The Vulgate's servierim, a subjunctive perfect after quod, expresses the same completed service as the Hebrew qal perfect but through a different grammatical mood required by Latin subordination.