Genesis 35:19

Summary

The verse reports the death of Rachel and her burial on the road to Ephrathah, followed by an explanatory note identifying that place as Bethlehem. The sentence uses two consecutive narrative verbs to mark the sequence of events (death, then burial), closing with a nominal clause that glosses the place name for the reader.

Key words

• Tamot ("she died", H4191) — qal narrative verb (vav-consecutive), presenting death as the first event in the sequence, without further qualification of cause or manner.
• tikkaver ("she was buried", H6912) — niphal narrative verb, passive form: the grammatical subject Rachel undergoes the action of burial rather than performing it; the agent is not named.
• Derekh ("[the] way of", H1870) — construct noun, linking directly to the following place name, forming the phrase "way of Ephrathah" rather than an independent noun.
• hi' ("that/she", H1931) — independent personal pronoun, functioning here as the subject of an identifying clause ("she/that [is] Beth-lehem"), not part of the main narrative chain.
• Beit Lachem ("Beth-lehem", H1035) — proper name in apposition, supplying an alternate or clarifying designation for the place just called Ephrathah.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two vav-consecutive clauses that carry the narrative forward: first Tamot Rachel ("and Rachel died"), then tikkaver be-derekh Ephrathah ("and she was buried on the way of Ephrathah"). The verb tikkaver is niphal, a passive/reflexive stem, so the text states that burial happened to Rachel without specifying who performed it — the grammar keeps the focus on Rachel as the one undergoing the action rather than on any burying agent.

After the narrative sequence, the text shifts construction: hi' Beit Lachem ("she/that [is] Beth-lehem") is a nominal (verbless) clause, not connected to the preceding verbs by a vav-consecutive. This clause uses the pronoun hi' to point back to Ephrathah, syntactically presenting Beth-lehem as an identification or gloss of Ephrathah rather than as a new event in the story. The construct phrase derekh Ephrathah ("way of Ephrathah", H1870 + H0672) ties the burial location to a route associated with Ephrathah, and the appended clause then equates that location with Beth-lehem.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the closing identification as αὕτη ἐστὶν Βηθλέεμ ("this is Bethlehem"), matching the Hebrew's nominal identifying clause. The Vulgate expands the construct phrase into a relative clause, "in via quae ducit Ephratam" ("on the way that leads to Ephrath"), where the Hebrew simply has the construct noun derekh ("way of") followed directly by the place name without an explicit verb of leading or directing.