Genesis 4:23
וַיֹּאמֶר לֶמֶךְ לְנָשָׁיו עָדָה וְצִלָּה שְׁמַעַן קוֹלִי נְשֵׁי לֶמֶךְ הַאְזֵנָּה אִמְרָתִי כִּי אִישׁ הָרַגְתִּי לְפִצְעִי וְיֶלֶד לְחַבֻּרָתִֽי׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיֹּ֨אמֶר לֶ֜מֶךְ לְנָשָׁ֗יו עָדָ֤ה וְצִלָּה֙ שְׁמַ֣עַן קוֹלִ֔י נְשֵׁ֣י לֶ֔מֶךְ הַאְזֵ֖נָּה אִמְרָתִ֑י כִּ֣י אִ֤ישׁ הָרַ֙גְתִּי֙ לְפִצְעִ֔י וְיֶ֖לֶד לְחַבֻּרָתִֽי׃
εἶπεν δὲ Λάμεχ ταῖς ἑαυτοῦ Ἄδα καὶ Σέλλα, ἀκούσατέ μου τῆς φωνῆς· γυναῖκες Λάμεχ, ἐνωτίσασθέ μου τοὺς λόγους· ὅτι ἄνδρα ἀπέκτεινα εἰς τραῦμα ἐμοί, καὶ νεανίσκον εἰς μώλωπα ἐμοί·
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Dixitque Lamech uxoribus suis Adæ et Sellæ: Audite vocem meam, uxores Lamech; auscultate sermonem meum: quoniam occidi virum in vulnus meum, et adolescentulum in livorem meum.
Lamec les dijo a sus mujeres: “Adá y Zilá, escuchen bien mi voz; mujeres de Lamec, presten atención a mis palabras: maté a un hombre por haberme herido, y a un joven por haberme golpeado.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y dijo Lamech á sus mujeres: Ada y Zilla, oid mi voz; mujeres de Lamech, escuchad mi dicho: que varón mataré por mi herida, y mancebo por mi golpe:
Then Lamech said to his wives: “ Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my speech. For I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Lamech addresses his two wives, Adah and Zillah, in a poetic speech built on parallel imperatives calling them to listen. He then declares, using a completed-action verb, that he has killed a man in response to a wound inflicted on him, and a young man for a bruise.
Key words
- shema'an ("listen to", H8085) — qal imperative, feminine plural: a direct command addressed to the two wives collectively.
- ha'zenah ("give ear to", H0238) — hiphil (causative) imperative, feminine plural: parallels shema'an but uses the causative stem, literally "cause [your] ear [to be attentive]," reinforcing the first command with a different verbal root.
- haragti ("I have killed", H2026) — qal perfect, first person: marks the killing as a completed action from the speaker's viewpoint, not an ongoing or future one.
- le-fitz'i ("for/to my wound", H6482) — preposition le + masculine singular construct noun + 1st person suffix: attaches the killing to "my wound," though the construct form itself does not specify whether Lamech received the wound or inflicted it.
- le-chavurati ("for/to my bruise", H2250) — feminine singular construct noun + 1st person suffix, paired with yeled ("young man", H3206) in the second half of the parallel line.
Sound structure
The verse is built on two matching parallel pairs. First, shema'an qoli ("listen to my voice") and ha'zenah imrati ("give ear to my speech") repeat the same command with different verbs and nouns (qol, "voice," vs. imrah, "speech"). Second, the concluding lines pair ish ("a man", H0376) with harágti le-fitz'i and yeled ("a young man", H3206) with the implied verb plus le-chavurati, producing a balanced two-part statement about a "man" and a "young man."
The perfect-tense verb haragti situates the killing as already accomplished at the moment of speech. The prepositional phrases le-fitz'i and le-chavurati use le attached to construct nouns with a first-person suffix; this construction in Hebrew does not grammatically specify whether the "wound" and "bruise" belong to Lamech (received) or were caused by him — the data only shows the noun-suffix combination "my wound"/"my bruise" linked to the killing by le.
Differences between versions
The Hebrew haragti is a qal perfect ("I have killed" / "I killed"), matched by the LXX aorist ἀπέκτεινα and the Vulgate perfect occidi, both indicating a completed past action. The RV1909 renders this as mataré ("I will kill"), a future form, differing from the completed-action sense the Hebrew perfect and the other versions convey.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.