Genesis 35:6

Summary

The verse narrates that Jacob arrived at Luz, identified as Beth-el, in the land of Canaan, and specifies that he traveled together with all the people who were with him.

Key words

• va-yavo ("and he came", H0935G) — qal narrative verb; opens the clause and states the main action, "coming," with Jacob as its grammatical subject introduced immediately after.
• Luzah ("to Luz", H3870H) — the place name Luz carries the directional he suffix (H9011), marking motion "toward" that location, without need for a separate preposition.
• hi' ("she", H1931) — feminine personal pronoun referring back to Luz (a feminine noun), used to introduce the identifying clause "that is Beth-el."
• hu' ("he", H1931) — masculine personal pronoun; after the parenthetical identification of the place, this pronoun resumes the subject of the sentence, restating "he" (Jacob) before adding the accompanying people.
• kol-ha'am ("all the people", H3605 + H9009 + H5971A) — construct chain "all of the people," followed by the relative clause asher immo ("who [was] with him"), specifying the group traveling with Jacob.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a straightforward narrative verb-subject sequence: va-yavo Ya'aqov Luzah — "and Jacob came to Luz." The directional he on Luzah does the work that a preposition like "to" would do in English, attaching directly to the place name. The text then inserts a parenthetical identification of Luz using the relative particle asher ("which") and the feminine pronoun hi' ("she is in the land of Canaan... she is Beth-el"), since Luz is grammatically feminine. This nested clause explains that Luz and Beth-el are the same location, situated in "the land of Canaan" (a construct phrase, "land of Canaan").

After this parenthetical identification, the text switches to the masculine pronoun hu' ("he"), which grammatically resumes Jacob as the subject of the sentence after the intervening clause about the place name. This resumptive pronoun allows the sentence to continue: "he [Jacob] and all the people who were with him [arrived]." The construct chain kol ha'am ("all of the people") followed by the relative clause asher immo ("who was with him") specifies the accompanying group without repeating the main verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate render the pronoun-resumption differently from the Hebrew's separated clauses. Both Greek (ἦλθεν... αὐτὸς καὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς) and Latin (Venit... ipse et omnis populus) attach "he and all the people" directly to the single verb "came," compressing the Hebrew's two-pronoun structure (hi' for Luz/Beth-el, then hu' resuming Jacob) into one continuous clause. The Hebrew's explicit double identification — hi' Beth-el and hu' resuming Jacob — is smoothed into a single flowing sentence in both the Greek and Latin renderings, as also reflected in the modern versions (BSB, SBLIBRE), which merge the place identification into a parenthetical aside rather than preserving the two separate pronoun clauses.