31:43 Laban replied 1 to Jacob, “These women 2 are my daughters, these children are my grandchildren, 3 and these flocks are my flocks. All that you see belongs to me. But how can I harm these daughters of mine today 4 or the children to whom they have given birth? 31:44 So now, come, let’s make a formal agreement, 5 you and I, and it will be 6 proof that we have made peace.” 7
31:45 So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a memorial pillar. 31:46 Then he 8 said to his relatives, “Gather stones.” So they brought stones and put them in a pile. 9 They ate there by the pile of stones. 31:47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, 10 but Jacob called it Galeed. 11
1 tn Heb “answered and said.”
2 tn Heb “daughters.”
3 tn Heb “children.”
4 tn Heb “but to my daughters what can I do to these today?”
5 tn Heb “cut a covenant.”
6 tn The verb הָיָה (hayah) followed by the preposition לְ (lÿ) means “become.”
7 tn Heb “and it will become a witness between me and you.”
9 tn Heb “Jacob”; the proper name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.
10 sn The Hebrew word for “pile” is גַּל (gal), which sounds like the name “Galeed” (גַּלְעֵד, gal’ed). See v. 48.
13 sn Jegar Sahadutha. Laban the Aramean gave the place an Aramaic name which means “witness pile” or “the pile is a witness.”
14 sn Galeed also means “witness pile” or “the pile is a witness,” but this name is Canaanite or Western Semitic and closer to later Hebrew. Jacob, though certainly capable of speaking Aramaic, here prefers to use the western dialect.