What Does Genesis 29:29 Mean in the King James?
And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The sentence places Bilhah inside the verb “gave”: Laban acts, Rachel receives, and Bilhah’s choice is never spoken.
THE MEANING
Here, a person enters a household through someone else’s decision: Laban gives, Rachel receives, and Bilhah is assigned as a maid. Her role is named, but the verse gives no words to her will; that silence remains visible as you read.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A household arrangement does not establish Bilhah’s consent; the verse records the choices of the giver and recipient, not hers.
THE ROOT
וַיִּתֵּן
wayyitten
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, put, set, or place.
“gave” in this verse is wayyitten. The root can also mean to put or place, so the verb positions Bilhah within Rachel’s household. Its grammar makes her the object of someone else’s action while leaving her own response outside the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift, present.
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root makes the language of giving explicit; here, the person given is not an object but a woman assigned a role.
netinim: Temple servants, literally “given ones.”
נְתִינִים
This name for people assigned to temple service shows the root describing people placed in a role of service, as it does with Bilhah.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly shows that treating a person as transferable can reshape a household’s kinship and status.
And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her maid, and gave her Jacob to wife.If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.THE THREAD
And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.The same נתן root appears when Rachel gives Bilhah to Jacob as a wife. The repeated verb carries the language of transfer from Laban’s act into Rachel’s, while Bilhah remains the person acted upon.
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