Genesis 2:19

2:19 The Lord God formed ¹  out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would ²  name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

Genesis 24:30

24:30 When he saw the bracelets on his sister’s wrists and the nose ring ³  and heard his sister Rebekah say, ⁴  “This is what the man said to me,” he went out to meet the man. There he was, standing ⁵  by the camels near the spring.

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¹ tn Or “fashioned.” To harmonize the order of events with the chronology of chapter one, some translate the prefixed verb form with vav (ו) consecutive as a past perfect (“had formed,” cf. NIV) here. (In chapter one the creation of the animals preceded the creation of man; here the animals are created after the man.) However, it is unlikely that the Hebrew construction can be translated in this way in the middle of this pericope, for the criteria for unmarked temporal overlay are not present here. See S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew, 84-88, and especially R. Buth, “Methodological Collision between Source Criticism and Discourse Analysis,” Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, 138-54. For a contrary viewpoint see IBHS 552-53 §33.2.3 and C. J. Collins, “The Wayyiqtol as ‘Pluperfect’: When and Why,” TynBul 46 (1995): 117-40.

² tn The imperfect verb form is future from the perspective of the past time narrative.

³ tn Heb “And it was when he saw the nose ring and the bracelets on the arms of his sister.” The word order is altered in the translation for the sake of clarity.

⁴ tn Heb “and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying.”

⁵ tn Heb “and look, he was standing.” The disjunctive clause with the participle following the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) invites the audience to view the scene through Laban’s eyes.