with: alongside, in the company of, or in dealing with someone or something
This is the ordinary Hebrew word for "with." Its heart is the idea of one person or thing being next to another, and every other use grows out of that single picture of nearness. From simply being in someone's company it stretches to being at their side in support, to keeping something in one's care, to acting toward another party, and even to the sense "from beside" when a small prefix meaning "from" is attached.
The uses shade into one another rather than dividing cleanly, which is normal for a small connecting word. The main branches are:
- being in someone's company: going, living, or walking with them
- standing at someone's side in support, or on their side in a quarrel
- being near or beside a place
- being in a person's keeping or at their disposal
- being the party someone deals with: making an agreement with, speaking with, showing kindness to, or contending against
- coming "from beside" a person or source
Hebrew has a close partner, ʿim (עִם), that also means "with," and in ordinary prose the two are largely interchangeable, sometimes even in neighboring verses. A frequent trap is that this word is spelled exactly like a separate, untranslatable grammar-marker (the one that flags the direct object of a verb); readers should not blend the two or read hidden meaning into the overlap.
Nuances
How to read the word אֵת in Eve's exclamation at the birth of Cain, קָנִיתִי אִישׁ אֶת־יְהוָה. Every ancient version already found the clause difficult and reshaped it, and modern scholars remain divided over whether the word here is the object marker or a preposition, and if a preposition, which one.
- majorityIt is the preposition "with," in the sense "with the help of": Eve gives thanks that she bore a son by the LORD's aid. This is the prevailing modern reading and stands behind most English translations, though the exact "help of" sense is otherwise unattested for the word and has to be supplied from the context.; Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (Word Biblical Commentary 1), 101-102; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17 (NICOT), 220-222; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary), 32-33; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible 1), 29-32
- minorityIt is the preposition "with" in a comparative sense, "equally with, on a par with," a nuance the word carries elsewhere (Leviticus 26:39; Isaiah 45:9): "I have produced a man equally with the LORD." Umberto Cassuto reads Eve's words as an exuberant boast of sharing in creation, and Bruce Waltke as prideful overreach continuing the fall; the classical rabbinic tradition (Rashi, drawing on the Talmud) hears the same "together with" more devoutly, as partnership with God in bringing forth life.; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part One, 197-201; Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 96; Rashi on Genesis 4:1 (drawing on b. Niddah 31a and Genesis Rabbah 22:2)
- minorityIt is the preposition "with" marking the LORD as co-agent in conception: "I have brought forth a man together with the LORD," the LORD sharing in the act of procreation, as he elsewhere opens the wombs of the matriarchs. This reading leans on the Ugaritic use of the same Hebrew verb for divine begetting.; David E. Bokovoy, "Did Eve Acquire, Create, or Procreate with Yahweh? A Grammatical and Contextual Reassessment," Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013): 19-35
- minorityIt is a preposition of source, "from": "I have gained a man from the LORD." This recent proposal matches what the earliest translators did with the line (the old Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac versions all render it "from before" or "through" the LORD) and is argued to be the strongest reading on linguistic grounds, since the verb "acquire" normally takes its source with this preposition.; Ellen van Wolde, "What did Eve say? A study of Genesis 4.1b," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 49.4 (2025): 435-448; R. Borger, "Genesis 4:1," Vetus Testamentum 9 (1959): 85-86
- minorityIt is the object marker, placing "the LORD" in apposition to "a man": "I have gotten a man, namely the LORD." On this reading Eve hails the newborn as the LORD himself, the promised deliverer of Genesis 3:15. This is Luther's reading; modern criticism has essentially abandoned it as anachronistic and syntactically forced, and its conservative defenders now soften it to a mistaken hope that Cain was the promised offspring rather than a claim that he was God.; Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis (Luther's Works, vol. 1), 242; Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Messiah in the Old Testament (Zondervan, 1995), 37-41; C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (P&R, 2006), 194-198