Genesis 38:24

Summary

After about three months, Judah is informed that his daughter-in-law Tamar has become pregnant through prostitution. Judah responds with a command to bring her out so that she may be burned.

Key words

• zanetah ("she has acted as a prostitute", H2181) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular; marks a completed action attributed to Tamar.
• harah ("pregnant", H2030A) — feminine singular adjective describing her state, introduced by hinneh ("here!", H2009), which draws attention to the fact as newly revealed.
• liznunim ("to/for prostitutions", H2183) — masculine plural noun with prefixed preposition le ("to", H9005), indicating the cause or manner of the pregnancy.
• hotzi'u ("bring out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) imperative, plural "you all," Judah's direct command.
• tissaref ("she may be burned", H8313) — niphal (passive) imperfect with vav, expressing the intended or resulting action following the command.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yehi ("and it was", H1961) followed by a time clause built with ke-mi-shelosh chodashim ("as from three months", H7969 + H2320G), a construct chain meaning roughly "about three months." The report to Judah is expressed through va-yuggad ("and it was told", H5046), a hophal form — the causative-passive stem signals that Judah receives the news passively, without a named subject doing the telling. The content of the report is introduced by the infinitive le'mor ("saying", H0559), a standard formula preceding direct speech.

Within the reported speech, the perfect verb zanetah places the accusation as a completed fact from the speaker's perspective, attached to Tamar kallatekha ("Tamar your daughter-in-law", H8559G + H3618H), the construct phrase specifying the family relationship to Judah via the pronominal suffix -kha ("your", H9021). The clause continues with gam hinneh harah liznunim, where gam ("also", H1571) adds emphasis, and hinneh ("here!", H2009) presents the pregnancy as an immediate, visible fact. The plural noun znunim ("prostitutions", H2183) attributes the pregnancy to repeated or generalized sexual activity rather than a single act.

Judah's reply uses the hiphil imperative hotzi'u ("bring out", H3318H), a plural command directed at unspecified listeners, followed by the niphal imperfect tissaref ("she may be burned", H8313), connected by the vav that expresses sequence or purpose — the burning follows from her being brought out.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew hophal yuggad ("it was told") with the plural participle λέγοντες ("saying," plural), implying multiple unnamed reporters, where the Hebrew verb form itself does not specify a plural subject. The Vulgate's nuntiaverunt ("they announced") similarly supplies a plural subject not explicit in the Hebrew construction. Both LXX (ἐν γαστρὶ ἕλει, "she has in the womb") and Vulgate (videtur uterus illius intumescere, "her womb appears to swell") describe the pregnancy through a different image than the Hebrew adjective harah ("pregnant") paired with liznunim ("through prostitutions"), which directly names the perceived cause.