Genesis 38:19

Summary

Genesis 38:19 narrates four sequential actions of Tamar: she gets up, leaves, removes her veil, and puts on the garments associated with her widowed state. The verse uses an unbroken chain of narrative verb forms typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling.

Key words

• Ta.kom ("she arose", H6965B) — qal verb in the narrative chain (vav-consecutive), marking the first event in the sequence "and then...".
• Ta.sar ("she removed", H5493G) — hiphil (causative) verb; the causative stem conveys that she actively caused the veil to be taken off, rather than a simple "it fell off."
• tze.'i.Fah ("veil of-her", H6809) — masculine singular noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, literally "veil-of her."
• big.Dei ("clothes of", H0899B) — masculine plural construct noun, grammatically bound to the following word to form a compound expression, "clothes of X."
• 'al.me.nu.Tah ("widowhood-of-her", H0491) — feminine singular noun in construct, completing the chain big.Dei...'al.me.nu.Tah, "garments of her widowhood."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built entirely from four verbs connected by the narrative va ("and"), each pushing the story forward in strict sequence: Ta.kom ("she arose"), Te.lekh ("she went"), Ta.sar ("she removed"), til.Bash ("she put on"). This chain structure is a hallmark of Hebrew narrative prose, where consecutive events are reported one after another without subordination.

The phrase tze.'i.Fah me.'a.Lei.ha ("her veil from upon her") uses the construct noun with a suffix plus a compound preposition (me + 'al + suffix) to specify that the veil is removed from a position on her body — a spatial detail explicit in the Hebrew grammar.

The final clause, big.Dei 'al.me.nu.Tah, is a construct chain: literally "garments-of widowhood-of-her." Hebrew construct chains link two nouns without an explicit "of," relying on word order and vocalization to signal the possessive relationship. This produces a compact expression meaning "the garments belonging to her widowed condition," referring back to the state introduced earlier in the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final phrase as τὰ ἱμάτια τῆς αὐτῆς ("the garments of the same"), which does not explicitly carry a term corresponding to "widowhood" as the Hebrew 'al.me.nu.Tah does — the Greek phrase names only "her garments" without a specifier.

The Vulgate expands the action with depositoque habitu quem sumpserat ("and having put aside the garment which she had assumed"), adding the clause "which she had assumed" (quem sumpserat), a detail not present in the Hebrew, which states only that she removed the veil "from upon her" without specifying that it had been previously "assumed" or "taken on."