Genesis 34:31

Summary

This is the closing verse of Genesis 34, where the sons of Jacob (Simeon and Levi, based on the preceding narrative) respond with a rhetorical question, justifying their earlier actions by asking whether their sister should have been treated like a prostitute. The verse is framed as direct speech introduced by a narrative verb of saying.

Key words

• va-yyomeru ("and they said", H9001 + H0559) — narrative vav plus qal verb in a form that advances the story sequence; marks this as the next event, introducing direct speech.
• ha ("¿", H9008) — interrogative particle attached to the following word, signaling that what follows is a question rather than a statement.
• zonah ("a prostitute", H2181) — qal participle, feminine singular; grammatically it describes "the one who does/practices," here functioning as a noun for a woman engaged in prostitution.
• ya'aseh ("will he use/do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular; the imperfect aspect indicates an action viewed as ongoing, potential, or not-yet-completed, which fits the hypothetical/rhetorical framing of the question.
• 'achote-nu ("our sister", H0269 + H9025) — construct noun with pronominal suffix; the construct form links "sister" directly to "our," and the direct object marker 'et (H0853) preceding it marks her as the object of the verb ya'aseh.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a single rhetorical question following the narrative introduction va-yyomeru ("and they said"). The question itself begins with the interrogative particle ha prefixed directly onto the preposition kh ("like") plus zonah ("a prostitute"), producing the phrase "like a prostitute?" as the fronted, emphasized element of the question. This fronting places the comparison — being treated as a prostitute — at the head of the sentence, before the verb itself appears.

The verb ya'aseh follows, in the qal imperfect. The imperfect here does not mark simple future tense but frames the action as something under consideration — a hypothetical or morally weighed action ("would he treat / should he have treated"). The object of this verb is marked by the untranslated direct object particle 'et, followed by 'achotenu ("our sister"), a construct noun with the first-person plural suffix "our." Grammatically, the sentence has no explicit subject pronoun for "he" — the third-person subject is carried by the verb form itself, referring back to a person named earlier in the chapter's narrative (not included in this word-by-word data).

The overall grammatical shape — interrogative particle plus fronted predicate noun, followed by imperfect verb and object — produces a question structure where the comparison ("like a prostitute") is the point of rhetorical emphasis, rather than the verb of action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the question with ὡσεὶ πόρνῃ χρήσωνται ("as if they should use [her] as a prostitute"), employing a subjunctive/plural verb form (χρήσωνται), which shifts the grammatical subject to a plural ("they") rather than keeping it singular as in the Hebrew ya'aseh ("he"). The Vulgate's abuti debuere ("they ought to have abused") also uses a plural verb, aligning with the LXX's plural subject rather than the Hebrew's singular verb form.