Genesis 34:30

Summary

Jacob confronts Simeon and Levi after their attack on Shechem, accusing them of having brought trouble on him and made him odious to the local inhabitants. He states that being few in number, if the Canaanites and Perizzites unite against him, he and his household will be destroyed.

Key words

• 'akhartem ("you have troubled", H5916) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural: a completed action jointly attributed to both sons, framing the accusation as an established fact rather than an ongoing dispute.
• hav'ishe-ni ("making me odious", H0887 + suffix) — hiphil infinitive with 1st person suffix; the hiphil (causative) stem indicates that Simeon and Levi caused Jacob's condition among the inhabitants, not that he became odious on his own.
• yoshev ("inhabitant of", H3427) — qal participle, construct form: describes the Canaanites and Perizzites as those who dwell/sit in the land, syntactically linked to ha'aretz ("the land", H0776G).
• metei mispar ("men of number", H4962 + H4557) — construct chain meaning "few in number"; the construct noun metei governs mispar, an idiom describing smallness of a group.
• ne'esfu / hikkuni / nishmadti (H0622, H5221, H8045) — three niphal/hiphil sequential perfects ("they will gather," "they will strike," "I will be destroyed") chained by narrative vav, forming a projected sequence of consequences rather than three separate statements.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) introducing direct speech from Jacob addressed jointly 'el-Shim'on ve-'el-Levi ("to Simeon and to Levi"). The main accusation uses two verbs describing what the sons did to Jacob: 'akhartem 'oti ("you have troubled me", qal perfect) and le-hav'ishe-ni ("in making me odious", hiphil infinitive). The hiphil stem of the second verb marks a causative relationship — the sons are presented as the direct cause of Jacob becoming odious be-yoshev ha'aretz ("among the inhabitant of the land"), specified further by two gentilic terms, ba-Kena'ani ("among the Canaanite", H3669A) and u-va-Perizzi ("and among the Perizzite", H6522), both singular gentilic forms used collectively for the peoples.

The second half of the verse shifts to Jacob's own situation, introduced by the independent pronoun 'ani ("I", H0589) plus the construct phrase metei mispar ("men of number"), emphasizing smallness of his group. Three sequential perfects with narrative vav — ne'esfu (niphal, "they will gather"), hikkuni (hiphil, "they will strike me"), nishmadti (niphal, "I will be destroyed") — form a chain of anticipated events, each verb continuing from the prior one in a cause-and-effect progression. The niphal (passive/reflexive) stem of nishmadti presents Jacob's destruction as something that happens to him rather than an action he performs, closing the verse with 'ani u-veiti ("I and my household", H0589 + H1004M + suffix).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders metei mispar ("men of number") as ὀλιγοστός... ἐν ἀριθμῷ ("very few in number"), an interpretive expansion of the Hebrew construct idiom. The LXX also renders hikkuni ("they will strike me") as συγκόψουσίν με ("they will cut me down"), a more intense verb than the Hebrew nakah ("to strike", H5221) typically conveys. The Vulgate's turbastis me corresponds closely to 'akhartem 'oti, while its delebor ego ("I will be wiped out") parallels the niphal nishmadti without altering its passive sense.