Genesis 5:29

Summary

Genesis 5:29 recounts the naming of Noah, explaining the choice through a statement attributed to his father: this child will bring relief from the toil and hardship of working the ground that Yehovah had cursed. The verse links the name No.ach ("Noah", H5146) to an expectation of comfort using a verb from the same root.

Key words

• i.yik.Ra' ("he called", H7121H) — qal narrative form; introduces the naming act as a sequential event in the story.
• ye.na.cha.Me.nu ("he will comfort us", H5162G) — piel imperfect with 1st person plural suffix; the piel stem intensifies the action ("to comfort deeply" rather than a simple state), and the imperfect aspect points to future or ongoing action, not something already accomplished.
• ma.'a.Se.nu ("our work", H4639G) — masculine singular construct noun with suffix "our"; construct form links it to the surrounding phrase about labor.
• 'i.tze.Von ("pain/toil of", H6093) — masculine singular construct; paired with ya.Dei.nu ("our hands", H3027G, dual construct), producing a two-part expression: "toil" and "hands."
• 'e.re.Ra ("he has cursed", H0779) — piel perfect; the perfect aspect marks a completed action, referring back to the prior cursing of the ground.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parts joined by le.Mor ("saying", H0559): the narrative action of naming (i.yik.Ra' ... she.M-o No.ach, "he called his name Noah") and the quoted explanation for that name. The explanation opens with the demonstrative zeh ("this [one]", H2088), which functions as the subject of the following verb, emphasizing the child as the one who will act.

The core statement uses ye.na.cha.Me.nu ("he will comfort us"), a piel imperfect built on the same consonantal root as the name No.ach, which the underlying Hebrew data does not explicitly gloss as a wordplay but which the shared root makes evident from the forms themselves (H5146 and H5162G). The relief is described as coming min ("from", H4480A) two sources joined by u. ("and", H9002): ma.'a.Se.nu ("our work") and 'i.tze.Von ya.Dei.nu ("the toil of our hands"). These are further qualified by a prepositional phrase, min-ha.'a.da.Mah ("from the ground"), modified by the relative clause 'a.Sher 'e.re.Ra-h Yah.weh ("which Yehovah has cursed"), using the piel perfect 'e.re.Ra to mark the cursing as a completed prior event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the divine name as Κύριος ὁ θεός ("Lord God"), adding θεός where the Hebrew has only Yah.weh (H3068G) without an accompanying word for "God." The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with Dominus alone. Additionally, the Vulgate's phrase "in terra" ("in the land/earth") differs slightly in construction from the Hebrew's min-ha.'a.da.Mah ("from the ground"), which uses a source preposition rather than a locative one.