Genesis 35:3

Summary

Jacob instructs his household to arise and go up to Beth-el, where he intends to build an altar to the God who answered him in his time of distress and who has remained with him throughout his journey. The verse combines a call to action with a theological rationale rooted in past experience.

Key words

• naKumah ("let us arise", H6965B) — qal infinitive form functioning cohortatively, expressing a collective proposal ("let us...") rather than a simple statement of fact.
• na'aleh ("we may go up", H5927G) — qal imperfect with vav, continuing the cohortative sequence; grammatically marks purpose or sequence following the first verb.
• ha'oneh ("the one answering", H6030B) — qal participle with definite article, describing God through an ongoing or characteristic action ("the [one who is] answering") rather than a single past event.
• yehi ("he has been", H1961) — narrative form introduced by the vav-consecutive, shifting the sentence from description of God's identity to narration of a completed relational history.
• 'immadi ("with me", H5978) — preposition plus first-person suffix, marking accompaniment; paired with yehi it expresses sustained presence rather than a single act of help.

What the text says

The verse opens with two verbs in sequence — naKumah ("let us arise", H6965B) and na'aleh ("we may go up", H5927G) — both carrying a cohortative sense of collective decision, followed by a third first-person verb, 'e'eseh ("I may make", H6213H), where Jacob shifts to the singular, indicating that the altar-building is his own individual action even though the movement to Bethel is communal.

The description of God uses the participle ha'oneh ("the one answering", H6030B), attached with the article to 'El ("God", H0410G), which frames the divine identity through a durative or repeated action linked to beyom tzarati ("in the day of my distress", H3117G/H6869B), a construct phrase joining "day" and "distress" into a single temporal expression. The clause then moves into narrative mode with the vav-consecutive verb yehi ("he has been", H1961), converting the description into a report of continued accompaniment expressed by 'immadi ("with me", H5978). The final clause uses the relative particle 'asher ("which", H0834A) followed by a qal perfect, halakhti ("I have gone", H1980G), marking the journey as already completed rather than ongoing.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final clause with the verb διέσωσέν ("he rescued/saved") in addition to μετ' ἐμοῦ ἦν ("he was with me"), adding a nuance of deliverance not lexically present in the Hebrew vayehi 'immadi ("and he has been with me", H1961/H5978), which states presence/accompaniment rather than rescue. The Vulgate's socius fuit itineris mei ("he was a companion of my journey") likewise interprets the Hebrew accompaniment phrase through the image of companionship, a rendering not explicit in the Hebrew construction itself.