What Does Genesis 29:23 Mean?
And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter and brought her in to him, and he went in to her.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her.THE KEY
The Hebrew gives Laban the acts of taking and bringing Leah, then gives Jacob the act of entering her; Leah is acted upon in every clause.
THE MEANING
The verse makes visible how a person can become part of other people’s arrangement: Laban takes and brings Leah, and Jacob goes in to her. Leah has no speech or action in the sentence, so the wording shows the imbalance without telling us what she feels.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A marriage arrangement by itself does not show that everyone involved has equal agency; this sentence gives Leah no action or speech.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקַּח
wayyiqqaḥ
GROWS FROM
לקח
lāqaḥ
to take, receive, acquire
“took” in this verse is wayyiqqaḥ. The three consonants לקח (lāqaḥ, “take, receive”) also form לֶקַח (leqaḥ, “teaching, instruction”, what is received). Here, the verb’s subject matters: Laban takes and brings Leah, while Jacob comes to her; Leah is given no verb of her own.
ALSO GROWS
lāqaḥ: to take, receive, acquire
לָקַח
This is the verb used for Laban’s action, placing him at the center of the taking and bringing that move Leah.
leqaḥ: teaching, instruction; what is received
לֶקַח
The same root can describe what a hearer takes in, extending the idea of taking from a physical act to reception.
THE PATTERN
When a union is formed through an act of taking, the sentence identifies who initiates the movement.
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from Adam, he built into a woman, and brought her to Adam.So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife. And when he went in to her, the LORD gave her to conceive, and she bore a son.And Joseph, raised from sleep, did as the messenger of the LORD had set before him, and took his wife to his side.THE THREAD
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from Adam, he built into a woman, and brought her to Adam.Genesis 2:22 uses the same root לקח (lāqaḥ, “take”) and also says that the woman is brought to the man. The shared verbs make the act of taking and bringing visible in both verses, while the different actor changes the scene’s weight.
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