Genesis 38:2

Summary

The verse narrates that Judah saw a Canaanite woman, daughter of a man named Shua, took her as wife, and had intercourse with her. The action is presented as a rapid sequence of three verbs describing seeing, taking, and entering.

Key words

• va-yar ("and he saw", H7200) — qal narrative form, first in the chain of consecutive actions marking the story's progression.
• bat ("a daughter of", H1323) — feminine singular construct noun, linking the woman to her father's identity rather than naming her directly.
• Kena'ani ("a Canaanite", H3669) — gentilic adjective, masculine singular, identifying the ethnic origin of the man whose daughter Judah saw.
• va-yiqqacheha ("and he took her", H3947) — qal narrative verb with third-person feminine singular pronominal suffix -ha ("her"), indicating the direct object is attached to the verb itself.
• va-yavo ("and he went/entered", H0935) — qal narrative verb, followed by the preposition 'elei- ("into/to") plus the same suffix -ha ("her"), forming the phrase "he went in to her."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-yar ("and he saw"), va-yiqqacheha ("and he took her"), va-yavo ("and he went in to her") — each introduced by the narrative va (H9001), which links successive actions in sequence without additional connectors. This construction gives the verse a rapid, paratactic rhythm typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative, where one action follows directly upon another.

The woman herself is not named; she is identified only through the construct phrase bat-'ish Kena'ani ("daughter of a Canaanite man", H1323 + H0376 + H3669), meaning her identity in the text is defined relationally, through her father's ethnicity, rather than by her own name. Her father's name, Shua (H7770), is introduced separately via the phrase u-shemo Shua ("and his name [was] Shua", H8034 + H9023), using the construct noun shem with a possessive suffix.

The final verb, va-yavo ("and he went"), is followed by the preposition 'elei- ("into", H0413) plus the same feminine suffix -ha ("her") already attached to the previous verb va-yiqqacheha. This repetition of the pronominal suffix across two verbs is a feature of Hebrew syntax not directly reproducible in English, which tends to use only one pronoun ("her") across the two clauses "took her" and "went in to her."

Differences between versions

The LXX (Septuagint) renders bat-'ish Kena'ani with a doubled phrase "ἀνθρώπου ἀνθρώπου" ("of a man of a man"), which appears as a textual duplication compared to the single Hebrew construct chain "daughter of a Canaanite man." The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure more closely, rendering Kena'ani as "Chananæi" ("Canaanite") and preserving the sequence of seeing, taking as wife, and entering. The SBLIBRE Spanish version renders va-yar as "conoció" ("knew/met") rather than a literal "saw," a translational choice not present as a distinct nuance in the Hebrew verb ra'ah ("to see", H7200) itself.