Genesis 35:10

Summary

The verse reports a divine speech act in which Elohim declares that Jacob's name will change to Israel, followed by a narrative statement that God performed the naming. The Hebrew structure moves from direct speech (verses of prohibition/affirmation) to a concluding narrative action.

Key words

• shimkha ("your name", H8034) — masculine singular noun in construct form with pronominal suffix, repeated three times (lines 6, 11, 19) to frame the entire declaration around the concept of "name."
• yiqqare' ("it will be called", H7121G) — niphal (passive) imperfect; the passive voice removes the grammatical agent, stating that the name "will not be called" Jacob rather than "you will not call yourself" or "they will not call you."
• ki 'im ("that... except", H3588B + H0518B) — a two-part subordinating construction that functions together as a strong contrastive "but rather" / "except," setting up the replacement name.
• yihyeh ("it will be", H1961) — qal imperfect of the verb "to be," used to assert the future state of the name Israel, contrasting with the passive yiqqare' used for the negated Jacob-name.
• yiqra' ("he called", H7121G) — same root as yiqqare' but here in qal narrative (active, past-sequential) form with Elohim as subject, closing the verse with the actual act of naming rather than mere declaration.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parts: direct speech from Elohim (H0430G, plural form used for the divine subject) to Jacob, and a narrative closing clause. In the speech, the negated clause uses the niphal (passive) yiqqare' ("it will not be called"), which grammatically avoids naming an agent — the text does not say "you will not call" or "people will not call," but rather frames the non-use of the name Jacob as a general state of affairs. This contrasts with the following clause, where yihyeh ("it will be," qal) asserts the new name Israel as a straightforward future fact, without the passive construction.

The ki 'im ("that... except", H3588B + H0518B) construction ties these two statements together as a single contrastive unit: not X, but rather Y. The word shimkha ("your name") is repeated three times across the divine speech, emphasizing the naming act structurally through repetition. The final clause shifts from the passive/future speech into the qal narrative verb yiqra' ("he called"), with Elohim now grammatically active as the one performing the naming, using the same root (H7121G) as yiqqare' but in a different voice and aspect.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the passive Hebrew construction lo'-yiqqare' ("it will not be called") as οὐ ἔτι ("no longer"), shifting from an impersonal passive to a direct second-person statement ("your name is no longer Jacob"), and omits the repeated shimkha found three times in the Hebrew. The Vulgate's "Non vocaberis ultra Jacob" ("you will no longer be called Jacob") uses a second-person passive verb, differing from the Hebrew's impersonal yiqqare', which has no explicit grammatical subject-you. The BSB reflects this same Latin/Greek pattern with "you will no longer be called," diverging from the Hebrew's passive-without-agent construction.