Genesis 38:7

Summary

The verse states that Er, the firstborn son of Judah, was evil in the assessment of Yehovah, and that Yehovah caused his death. The Hebrew presents this as a direct narrative sequence: Er's moral condition is described, then immediately followed by the consequence.

Key words

• ra' ("evil", H7451) — masculine singular adjective describing Er's moral quality; it stands without a verb, functioning as a predicate ("Er [was] evil").
• be'einei ("in the eyes of", H5869) — feminine dual construct noun; the dual form reflects the two physical eyes, used idiomatically to express a subjective judgment or perspective belonging to Yehovah.
• yamiteHu ("he put to death", H4191) — hiphil (causative) verb form with narrative vav and 3ms subject; the hiphil stem indicates that the subject (Yehovah) caused the death, rather than Er dying by another means.
• bekhor ("firstborn of", H1060) — masculine singular construct noun linking Er directly to Judah, marking his status in the genealogical/social order before the narrative of his death.
• va-yehi ("and he was", H1961) — qal narrative verb opening the sentence, the standard formula introducing a new narrative statement about a person's state or condition.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built in two narrative clauses joined by the vav construction typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling. The first clause, va-yehi 'Er bekhor Yehudah ra' be'einei Yehovah, sets up Er's identity (firstborn of Judah) and his moral status (ra', "evil") using a nominal/adjectival predicate rather than a finite verb — the adjective ra' itself functions as the predicate without an explicit "to be" verb in that clause. The phrase be'einei Yehovah ("in the eyes of Yehovah") uses the construct form of 'einei (dual of "eyes") to frame this evaluation as Yehovah's own perspective, a common Hebrew idiom for subjective judgment.

The second clause, va-yamitehu Yehovah, uses the hiphil (causative) stem of the verb mut ("to die"), so the form does not simply say "he died" but "he caused him to die" — Yehovah is the grammatical subject performing the causative action, with the pronominal suffix -hu ("him") marking Er as the direct object. The narrative vav on both verbs (va-yehi, va-yamitehu) creates a tight sequential chain: condition stated, then consequence enacted, with no intervening explanation given in the Hebrew text itself.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Yehovah (H3068) in the second clause as ho theos ("the God"), where the Hebrew has the name Yehovah repeated in both clauses. The Vulgate renders the second clause as "ab eo occisus est" ("he was killed by him"), using a passive construction with Er as grammatical subject, whereas the Hebrew hiphil verb yamitehu keeps Yehovah as the active grammatical subject and Er as the object.