Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 29:32-30:24
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph. Each name is a stated pun on the mother's words at his birth.
Genesis 29:32-30:24, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine a family where every child's name was chosen because it sounded like the exact sentence the parent said when the child was born, and the story tells you the sentence every time. That is literally how Genesis introduces eleven of Jacob's children, and English names like Reuben and Simeon carry none of the built-in sentences behind them.
Because eleven of Jacob's twelve sons, and his daughter Dinah, are named with explicit Hebrew wordplay explained in the very verse of their birth, an entire family tree built as a chain of puns that vanishes the moment each name is simply transliterated into English.
Every version transliterates each name and translates the mother's accompanying statement separately, correctly conveying both halves but never showing an English reader that the name is quite literally built from the sentence just spoken.
(eleven birth-name puns; see individual roots in the Sources)
Reuben echoes ra'ah, he has seen, from Leah's for the LORD hath looked upon my affliction; Simeon echoes shama, heard; Levi echoes lavah, joined, from now this time will my husband be joined unto me; Judah echoes yadah, praise, from now will I praise the LORD. Dan echoes din, judged; Naphtali echoes patal, wrestlings, from with great wrestlings have I wrestled; Gad echoes a word for fortune or a troop coming; Asher echoes happy. Issachar echoes sachar, wages or hire, from God hath given me my hire; Zebulun echoes zaval, to dwell or honor. Every name is presented as a live pun on the sentence spoken at that moment, not as an arbitrary label.
English transliterated names, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and the rest, are simply proper nouns; the sentence explaining each one is translated as ordinary narration standing beside the name rather than as the name's own root, so a reader cannot hear that mother and name are built from the same Hebrew word.
When Genesis explains a name at the moment of birth, always check whether the explanation is a pun on the name's own consonants rather than an unrelated statement placed nearby. This chapter is the densest concentration of that device anywhere in the Bible.
None of the individual names or their accompanying statements are contested among translators. What matters is that the device connecting them, name as embedded pun on the parent's own words, is structural to the whole passage and is completely inaccessible without the Hebrew, however accurately each half is translated on its own.
- Reuben/ra'ah, Simeon/shama, Levi/lavah, Judah/yadah: Genesis 29:32-35
- Dan/din, Naphtali/patal, Gad, Asher: Genesis 30:6-13
- Issachar/sachar, Zebulun/zaval: Genesis 30:18, 20
