Genesis 34:3

Summary

Genesis 34:3 describes Shechem's response after his encounter with Dinah, presenting three successive actions: his being emotionally bound to her, his loving her, and his speaking tenderly to her. The verse uses three distinct verbal forms to trace an escalating emotional attachment.

Key words

• tid.Bak ("it cleaved", H1692) — qal narrative verb; describes a tight, adhering bond, here applied to nefesh ("soul/self").
• naf.sh ("self", H5315) — feminine singular construct noun ("naphsho" = "his soul/self"); the subject that "cleaves" to Dinah, denoting the inner self or vital being.
• ya.'a.Kav ("he loved", H157) — qal narrative verb, third masculine singular; a direct statement of love/affection.
• y.da.Ber ("he spoke", H1696) — piel (intensive) narrative verb; the intensive stem suggests sustained or emphatic speech rather than a single utterance.
• lev ("heart of", H3820) — masculine singular construct noun, forming the idiom 'al lev ("to/upon the heart"), a set expression referring to persuasive or comforting speech.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three narrative-vav verbs (va-tidbaq, va-ye'ehav, va-yedaber), each introducing a sequential action attributed to Shechem, though grammatically the first verb's subject is nafsho ("his soul/self", H5315) rather than Shechem directly — literally "his soul cleaved to Dinah." This construction places the attachment first at the level of the inner self, distinct from the explicit statement "he loved" (va-ye'ehav) that follows.

The final clause uses the idiom va-yedaber 'al-lev ha-na'arah ("he spoke to the heart of the girl"), employing the piel stem of dabar (H1696), which in Biblical Hebrew often indicates emphatic or sustained speech. The construct phrase lev ha-na'arah ("heart of the girl") specifies the object of this speech as directed at her inner disposition, though the Hebrew text does not specify the content or tone beyond this idiom.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first verb with προσέσχεν ("he attended to / paid heed to"), which shifts the sense from "cleaving" to "attending," diverging from the more physical/adhesive nuance of Hebrew tidbaq (H1692). For the final clause, the LXX uses κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν ("according to the mind/understanding") where the Hebrew has 'al lev ("to the heart", H3820), substituting a different faculty (mind vs. heart) for the idiom. The Vulgate matches the Hebrew closely with "conglutinata est" ("was glued together") for the cleaving image, but adds "tristemque delinivit blanditiis" ("and he soothed her sadness with flatteries"), a phrase specifying sadness and flattery not present in the Hebrew text.