How many stones was Jacob's pillow made of?

Question

The KJV Version says in Genesis 28:11 "and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep." Jacob sleeps and and dreams. When he wakes up it seems that the stones have become one. The stone in Genesis 28:18 : "And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows." How many stones was the stone made up of?

Answer 1

The key part of 28:11 reads:

וַיִּקַּח֙ מֵאַבְנֵ֣י הַמָּק֔וֹם וַיָּ֖שֶׂם מְרַֽאֲשֹׁתָ֑י
he took from the stones of the place and he placed by his head

Unfortunately for our detective work, both places where we could have had a clue are instead elliptical. We would expect "one" and/or "it" for singular, or else "some" and/or "them" for plural. It's interesting that there is no direct object, but worth noting that this isn't the only instance with this verb in Genesis; for example, there is no explicit object in 21:14 and 22:6. In both cases the object is clearly implied by the context.

One thing in favour of the plural is that "some" or any quantity could indeed be omitted if it were plural. Compare English "There were geese there" as the equivalent of "There were some geese there." I couldn't find enough data to conclusively say whether the OT leans towards this style or not, but you can compare Judges 6:27, Deuteronomy 1:23, 2 Kings 17:32. (It's hard to create an exhaustive concordance of this structure because it's built on a common prefix rather than an individual word.)

Meanwhile, in 28:18:

וַיִּקַּ֤ח אֶת־הָאֶ֙בֶן֙ אֲשֶׁר־שָׂ֣ם מְרַֽאֲשֹׁתָ֔יו וַיָּ֥שֶׂם אֹתָ֖הּ מַצֵּבָ֑ה
he took the stone that he had set by his head and he set it (as) a pillar

This time there's clearly one stone: "the stone" is marked for singular, and the verb "he set" is accompanied by a direct object marked for 3^rd person singular plural: 'otah.¹

So grammatically we have v. 11 being ambiguous and v. 18 being clear that it's singular. Semantically, we could twist our way into a solution by saying that he took one or more stones in v. 11, and then in v. 18 took the one stone that was by (= closest to) his head, and set it in particular as a pillar. This would be pretty ad hoc but is grammatically possible.²

Most translations seem to interpolate "one" in v. 11 because of v. 18. (The Pulpit commentary explicitly acknowledges that this is its logic: "vide ver. 18".) The KJV is a rare exception that chooses the plural, but the NKJV makes it singular.

If we were to leave it ambiguous in our heads and try to answer directly the question "how many", I would say that if it were a specific number of any significance, that number would likely have been mentioned, as in Judges 6:27 and Deut. 1:23 mentioned above.

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_{¹ Note that "he had set" again elides the object. "Which" (asher) doesn't suffice because in BH, the direct object is often still explicit in its original place this construction, yielding awkward word-for-word translations like "the stone which he had placed it". It's this second "it" that is elided. I don't think this point is important to the discussion, though.}

_{² Incidentally, the Septuagint and the Vulgate appear to preserve this ambiguity, though my Greek and Latin are not very sophisticated.}

Answer 2

A Translation more sensitive to the Hebrew idiom of Gen 28:11 might read:

BSB: On reaching a certain place, he spent the night there because the sun had set. And taking one of the stones from that place, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.

Most other modern versions have something similar. That Jacob took a single stone as a pillow is confirmed by the singular verb, "put it under his head".

We have this again confirmed in V18 where the stone is again singular.