Genesis 36:12

Summary

The verse identifies Timna as a concubine of Eliphaz (Esau's son) and states that she bore him Amalek. It closes by classifying Amalek and, by extension, Eliphaz's other sons as belonging to the line of Adah, one of Esau's wives.

Key words

• tim.Na' ("Timna", H8555) — proper name, introduced as subject of the first clause with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) attached.
• ha.ye.Tah ("she was", H1961) — qal perfect, third feminine singular; a completed state, establishing Timna's status ("was a concubine") rather than a narrated event.
• fi.Le.gesh ("a concubine", H6370) — feminine singular noun functioning as the predicate of hayetah, defining Timna's relationship to Eliphaz.
• ben ("[the] son of", H1121A) — masculine singular construct, linking Eliphaz directly to Esau ("Eliphaz, son of Esau"), clarifying which Eliphaz is meant.
• Te.led ("she bore", H3205) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), third feminine singular; unlike hayetah, this verb moves the account forward in sequence ("and then she bore").

What the text says

The sentence divides into two grammatical movements. The first uses the stative verb hayetah ("she was") to establish a background fact: Timna's status as pilegesh ("concubine") of Eliphaz. The construct chain ben-Esav ("son of Esau") attached to Eliphaz's name specifies his lineage within the same clause, so the reader knows immediately that Eliphaz belongs to Esau's family line. The second movement shifts to the narrative verb va-Teled ("and she bore"), marked by the narrative vav that chains it to what precedes, presenting the birth of Amalek as the next event in sequence rather than a static description.

The direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) precedes Amalek, marking him grammatically as the object born, with no semantic content of its own. The closing formula uses 'elleh ("these", H0428) followed by the construct plural be.Nei ("sons of", H1121A) to classify the preceding names — here Amalek — under the heading "sons of Adah, wife of Esau," even though Adah is Eliphaz's mother, not Amalek's mother directly; the construct plural benei groups descendants under an ancestral wife's name without specifying degree of descent.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew benei ("sons of", H1121A) is rendered literally in the LXX as υἱοὶ ("sons") and in the Vulgate as filii ("sons"), both preserving the same generational ambiguity. The BSB translation renders this as "grandsons," an interpretive clarification not present in the Hebrew noun form itself, which simply reads "sons of Adah." The Vulgate also recasts the Hebrew's two independent verbal clauses (hayetah ... va-teled) into a single relative construction ("quae peperit ei," "who bore to him"), smoothing the paratactic Hebrew structure into a subordinate clause.