Genesis 34:7

Summary

The verse reports that Jacob's sons returned from the field and, upon hearing what had happened to their sister, became grieved and very angry, because a disgraceful act had been committed against Israel through the lying with Jacob's daughter — something the text says should not be done.

Key words

• va.yit.'atzevu ("they were indignant/grieved", H6087A) — hithpael narrative form (reflexive stem), suggesting the men experienced this distress internally/upon themselves, not merely felt an external emotion.
• yi.char ("it burned", H2734) — qal narrative, idiomatic for anger; the verb's subject is impersonal ("it burned to them"), with la.hem ("to them", H9038) marking the sons as those affected.
• nevalah ("a disgraceful folly", H5039) — feminine singular noun, the direct object of asah ("he had done", H6213A); a term for a shameful, senseless act.
• yesh'aseh ("it is done", H6213A) — niphal (passive) imperfect, describing an ongoing/future norm: the same root used for "he had done" (asah) appears here in passive voice for the general statement "thus it is not done."
• lishkav ("lying with", H7901I) — qal infinitive, expressing the specific act that constitutes the nevalah.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure places the sons' arrival first (u-venei Ya'aqov ba'u min-hasadeh, "and the sons of Jacob came from the field"), then attaches a temporal clause with the infinitive construct ke-shom'am ("when/in their hearing", from shama), followed by two narrative-vav verbs describing sequential reactions: va-yit'atzevu ("and they were indignant") and va-yichar ("and it burned"). This chain (vav + verb) marks consecutive completed actions in the story's timeline: hearing, then grief, then anger.

The causal clause beginning with ki ("for", H3588A) explains the reason: nevalah asah be-Yisra'el — "a nevalah he had done in Israel." The verb asah is qal perfect (completed action), attributing the deed to an unnamed "he" (grammatically implicit, not spelled out by name in the Hebrew clause itself). The infinitive lishkav ("to lie with") specifies the nature of the act, joined to the direct object marker 'et before bat-Ya'aqov ("daughter of Jacob").

The closing clause, ve-khen lo yiy'aseh ("and thus it is not done"), uses the niphal (passive) imperfect of the same root as asah, shifting from a specific completed deed to a general, ongoing/habitual negative statement about such acts.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew clause "ki-nevalah asah be-Yisra'el" does not name the subject of asah ("he had done") within this word-by-word data; the LXX makes the subject explicit by inserting "Συχέμ" (Shechem), rendering "ἄσχημον ἐποίησεν Συχὲμ ἐν Ἰσραήλ" ("Shechem committed an unseemly thing in Israel"). The Vulgate likewise supplies an implicit subject ("eo quod... operatus esset") without naming Shechem directly, keeping it impersonal like the Hebrew but still assuming a single male subject.