Genesis 35:7
וַיִּבֶן שָׁם מִזְבֵּחַ וַיִּקְרָא לַמָּקוֹם אֵל בֵּֽית־אֵל כִּי שָׁם נִגְלוּ אֵלָיו הָֽאֱלֹהִים בְּבָרְחוֹ מִפְּנֵי אָחִֽיו׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיִּ֤בֶן שָׁם֙ מִזְבֵּ֔חַ וַיִּקְרָא֙ לַמָּק֔וֹם אֵ֖ל בֵּֽית־אֵ֑ל כִּ֣י שָׁ֗ם נִגְל֤וּ אֵלָיו֙ הָֽאֱלֹהִ֔ים בְּבָרְח֖וֹ מִפְּנֵ֥י אָחִֽיו׃
καὶ ᾠκοδόμησεν ἐκεῖ θυσιαστήριον, καὶ ἐκάλεσεν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ τόπου ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἐπεφάνη αὐτῷ ὁ θεὸς ἐν τῷ ἀποδιδράσκειν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ προσώπου Ἠσαὺ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Ædificavitque ibi altare, et appellavit nomen loci illius, Domus Dei: ibi enim apparuit ei Deus cum fugeret fratrem suum.
Allí construyó un altar, y a ese lugar lo llamó El Betel, porque allí Dios se le había revelado cuando huía de su hermano.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y edificó allí un altar, y llamó al lugar El-Beth-el, porque allí le había aparecido Dios, cuando huía de su hermano.
There Jacob built an altar, and he called that place El-bethel, because it was there that God had revealed Himself to Jacob as he fled from his brother.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse narrates that Jacob built an altar at the site and named it El Beit-el ("El [is] Beth-el" / "the house of El"), explaining that this naming commemorates an earlier divine revelation he received there while fleeing from his brother.
Key words
- va.Yi.ven ("he built", H1129) — qal narrative form, marking the first sequential action of the verse: the construction of the altar.
- va.Yik.Ra ("he called", H7121) — qal narrative form, the second sequential action, introducing the act of naming the place.
- nig.Lu ("they had revealed themselves", H1540) — niphal (passive/reflexive) perfect, plural in form; it agrees grammatically with the plural noun ha-Elohim even though the reference is to the single act of divine appearing.
- ha-Elohim ("the God", H430) — masculine plural noun with definite article; despite its plural morphology it functions here as the grammatical subject taking a plural verb.
- be-vor'cho ("when he fled", from H1272) — infinitive construct with prefixed preposition be- and pronominal suffix "his", giving the temporal clause "in his fleeing," i.e., "when he fled."
What the text says
The verse is built on two paired narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive: va.Yi.ven ... miz.Be.ach ("and he built ... an altar") and va.Yik.Ra la.ma.Kom ... El Beit-el ("and he called the place ... El Beth-el"). The naming clause is then explained by a causal clause introduced by ki ("for/because", H3588A), which supplies the reason for the name: sham nig.Lu 'e.Lav ha-Elohim ("there God had revealed himself to him"). Here the verb nig.Lu is grammatically plural, matching the plural form of ha-Elohim, though the narrative describes a single revelatory event to one man.
The final clause, be-vor'cho mi-pe.Nei 'a.Chi.vo ("when he fled from the presence of his brother"), uses the construct chain pe.Nei 'a.Chi.vo ("the face/presence of his brother") to express "away from" — literally "from the face of his brother" — combined with an infinitive construct (vor'cho) bearing a pronominal suffix that supplies the subject ("his fleeing").
Differences between versions
The Hebrew explicitly gives the place-name as El Beit-el (words 9–11), but the LXX text as given here reads only "he called the name of the place" without reproducing that name, before continuing with the causal clause ("for there God appeared to him"). The Vulgate instead translates the name rather than transliterating it, rendering it as Domus Dei ("House of God"), corresponding to the "Beth-el" element rather than "El Beth-el" as a whole. The LXX also specifies the brother's identity as "Esau" (Ἠσαὺ), a name not present in this Hebrew verse, where only 'a.Chi.vo ("his brother") appears without a proper name.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.