Genesis 4:22

Summary

The verse states that Zillah bore Tubal-Cain, described as one who worked bronze and iron implements, and identifies Naamah as his sister. This continues the genealogical list of Lamech's descendants begun earlier in the chapter.

Key words

• gam ("also", H1571) — adverb reinforcing the subject, paired with the pronoun hi' to emphasize "she too" bore a child, paralleling the structure used for the other wife Adah in the preceding verses.
• yal.Dah ("she bore", H3205) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular, marking a completed act of birth attributed to Zillah as subject.
• lo.Tesh ("sharpener of", H3913) — qal participle, masculine singular construct; participles in construct chains describe ongoing or characteristic activity, here functioning almost as an occupational title rather than a one-time action.
• cho.Resh ("worker of", H2790A) — qal participle, masculine singular construct, forming a double construct chain with lo.Tesh and kol ("every", H1571... actually H3605) to specify the scope of the craft.
• 'a.Chot ("sister of", H0269) — feminine singular noun in construct, directly linking Naamah to Tubal-Cain as siblings within the genealogical notice.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ve-Tzillah followed by the emphatic construction gam hi' ("also she"), which grammatically highlights Zillah as a distinct subject performing the same type of action (bearing a child) previously attributed to another party in the passage's context. The verb yal.Dah is qal perfect, indicating a completed, narrated event — she bore Tubal-Cain.

The description of Tubal-Cain uses a chain of construct participles: lo.Tesh kol-cho.Resh nechoshet u-varzel — literally "sharpener of every worker of bronze and iron." This construct chain stacks two participles (lo.Tesh, cho.Resh) with the quantifier kol ("every", H3605) between them, producing a compressed genitive structure that in English requires unpacking into a relative clause ("one who sharpens every worker of bronze and iron" or, more loosely, "a craftsman in bronze and iron"). The construct chain does not use a finite verb for this description, unlike the finite yal.Dah used for Zillah's action, marking a grammatical distinction between the narrated birth-event and the participial, descriptive characterization of Tubal-Cain's craft.

The final clause uses 'achot ("sister of", H0269) in construct with Tuval-Kayin, followed by the name Na'amah, forming a nominal sentence without an explicit verb "to be" — the copula is implied, as is common in Hebrew nominal clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the construct chain lo.Tesh kol-cho.Resh nechoshet u-varzel as σφυροκόπος χαλκεὺς χαλκοῦ καὶ σιδήρου ("hammerer, smith of bronze and iron"), using two nominal terms (σφυροκόπος, χαλκεύς) rather than the Hebrew's participial construct chain. The Vulgate similarly shifts to nouns, malleator et faber ("hammerer and craftsman"), followed by in cuncta opera æris et ferri ("in all works of bronze and iron"), restructuring the Hebrew's compact double-construct phrase into a prepositional expansion. The Hebrew kol ("every", H3605), attached to cho.Resh, is rendered by the Vulgate as cuncta opera ("all works"), broadening the participle "worker" into "works."