Genesis 38:28

Summary

The verse describes a moment during Tamar's childbirth: one twin puts out a hand, the midwife ties a scarlet thread on it, and declares that this one emerged first. The Hebrew narrates the event through a tight chain of sequential verbs describing rapid, discrete actions.

Key words

• lidTah ("gave birth", H3205) — infinitive construct with the pronominal suffix "her" (-ah), forming the temporal clause "when she gave birth," anchoring the whole episode in a single moment during labor.
• yad ("a hand", H3027) — common noun, indefinite, appearing first without an explicit subject for the verb "he put out" — the text does not specify which twin.
• meyaledet ("midwife", H3205) — piel participle, feminine singular, from the same root as "gave birth"; it designates "the one who delivers," i.e., the midwife, marked with the definite article ha ("the", H9009).
• shani ("a scarlet thread", H8144) — masculine singular noun, the object tied onto the hand as a marker.
• rishonah ("first", H7223) — feminine singular ordinal number, describing the order of emergence, closing the midwife's declaration.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of four narrative (vayyiqtol) verbs: vayehi ("and it was"), vayiten ("and he put out"), vatiqqach ("and she took"), vatiqshor ("and she tied"). This chain creates a rapid sequence of actions typical of Hebrew narrative prose, where each verb pushes the story forward without needing additional connectors. Notably, the subject of vayiten ("he put out") is not stated by name — grammatically it is simply "he," to be inferred as one of the unborn twins, and the object is an indefinite yad ("a hand", H3027), only later specified as "his hand" (yado) when the thread is tied on it.

The midwife's speech is introduced by the infinitive leemor ("saying", H0559) and consists of a short declarative clause: zeh yatsa rishonah ("this one came out first"). The verb yatsa ("he came out", H3318) is in the perfect aspect, presenting the action as a completed fact from the midwife's viewpoint at the moment of speaking.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders the anonymous hand-extension with an explicit subject, ho heis ("the one"), where the Hebrew simply has an unspecified "he" attached to the verb "put out." Additionally, the Hebrew verb yatsa ("he came out") is in the perfect (completed action), while the Septuagint uses a future form (exeleusetai, "will come out") and the Vulgate fragment given, egredietur ("will come out"), likewise uses future tense — describing the birth order as a coming event rather than one already accomplished.