Genesis 35:12

Summary

God repeats to Jacob the promise of the land previously given to Abraham and Isaac, now extending it to Jacob and, after him, to his descendants. The verse frames this promise with two occurrences of the verb "to give," marking a shift from past grant to future assurance.

Key words

• natati ("I gave", H5414G) — qal perfect, 1st person: marks the completed act of giving the land to Abraham, referring to a past, finished promise.
• etten / ettenennah ("I will give"/"I will give it", H5414G) — qal imperfect, 1st person: same root as natati, but imperfect aspect signals an action not yet completed, oriented toward Jacob and his descendants.
• zar'akha ("your offspring", H2233H) — masculine singular noun in construct state with the suffix -kha ("your"), linking the promise beyond Jacob to those who come after him.
• acharekha ("after you", H0310A) — construct plural form with suffix -kha, temporally locating the promise's extension past Jacob's own lifetime.
• ha'aretz ("the land", H0776G) — feminine singular noun with definite article, appearing at both the start and end of the verse, framing the entire statement.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a single verbal root, H5414 ("to give"), used twice in different conjugations. The first instance, natati, is a qal perfect describing what was already done for Abraham and Isaac — introduced by the relative particle asher ("which", H0834A), which subordinates the land clause to that prior act. The second instance appears twice more: once as ettenennah (imperfect + object suffix "it", H9034), directed at Jacob ("to you I will give it"), and again as etten (plain imperfect), directed at the offspring after him. This grammatical repetition of the same root in two tenses creates a temporal bridge: what was historically completed for the ancestors becomes an ongoing, future-oriented grant for the descendant and his line.

The phrase ha'aretz ("the land") opens and closes the verse, forming an inclusio that frames the entire statement around the object being transmitted. The construct chains zar'akha ("your offspring") and acharekha ("after you") extend the referent beyond Jacob without naming further individuals, keeping the promise open-ended in scope.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew uses the root H5414 three times (natati, ettenennah, etten), distinguishing the completed grant to Abraham/Isaac from two separate future-tense grants to Jacob and to his offspring. The LXX renders this with only two Greek verbs (δέδωκα, "I have given"; δώσω, "I will give"), collapsing the promise to Jacob and to the offspring into a single future verb governing both σοὶ ("to you") and τῷ σπέρματί σου ("to your seed"). The Vulgate follows a similar pattern, using dedi ("I gave") once and dabo ("I will give") once, likewise merging the promise to Jacob and to his descendants into one clause rather than the Hebrew's two distinct occurrences of the imperfect form.