Genesis 35:14

Summary

Jacob sets up a stone pillar at the site where he had previously received a divine communication, then performs two ritual actions on it: pouring a libation and pouring oil. The verse describes the physical marking of the location through both an object (the pillar) and liquid offerings poured over it.

Key words

• va-yatzev ("and he set up", H5324) — hiphil narrative form, causative: Jacob causes the pillar to stand upright, not merely places it.
• matzevah ("a pillar", H4676) / matzevet ("pillar of", H4678) — the same root appears twice: first as a plain noun, then in construct form followed by even ("stone", H0068G), producing the appositive phrase "a pillar of stone."
• dibber ("he had spoken", H1696G) — piel perfect; the piel stem intensifies the verbal action ("spoke" with emphasis), and the perfect aspect marks the speaking as prior to the setting-up of the pillar. The subject of this verb is carried only in the verb form itself — no explicit noun subject appears in the Hebrew clause.
• va-yassekh ("and he poured out", H5258A) — hiphil narrative, causative form describing the pouring of the nesekh ("drink offering", H5262).
• va-yitzoq ("and he poured", H3332G) — qal (simple) narrative, a different verb root from yassekh, used specifically for the oil (shamen, H8081), showing that the text employs two distinct pouring verbs for the two substances.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-yatzev, va-yassekh, va-yitzoq (with va also opening the whole sequence) — each advancing the action step by step: setting up, pouring the libation, pouring the oil. The pillar itself is named twice, first simply as matzevah, then more specifically as matzevet even, a construct phrase literally "pillar of stone," which restates and specifies the object just introduced.

The relative clause asher dibber itto ("where he had spoken with him") uses only the verb dibber to indicate the speaker; the Hebrew text does not supply an explicit noun subject in this clause, relying on the verbal form and prior narrative context to identify who spoke. The two final actions use different roots — yassekh (hiphil) for the drink offering and yitzoq (qal) for the oil — marking the liquids as poured through distinguishable, if semantically overlapping, verbs.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew relative clause asher dibber itto has no explicit subject noun for "he had spoken." The Vulgate renders this as "quo locutus fuerat ei Deus," explicitly inserting "Deus" ("God") as the subject, and the BSB and SBLIBRE similarly add "God" in translation. The LXX (ᾧ ἐλάλησεν μετ' αὐτοῦ) also leaves the subject unexpressed as a separate noun, matching the Hebrew's grammatical ambiguity more closely than the Vulgate does.