Genesis 10:21

Summary

The verse states that sons were born to Shem, identifying him as "father" of all the descendants of Eber and as "brother" of Japheth. The final Hebrew word, ha-gadol ("the great/elder", H1419K), is positioned ambiguously and can be read as modifying either Japheth or Shem.

Key words

• yullad ("was born", H3205) — Pual (intensive passive) perfect, third person masculine singular; the passive voice avoids naming an explicit subject for the birth-event, framing it as "it was born to Shem" rather than "Shem bore."
• gam-hu ("also he", H1571 + H1931) — an adverb plus independent pronoun added for emphasis, singling out Shem within the wider Noah-genealogy pattern.
• avi ("father of", H0001G) — masculine singular construct noun, opening a construct chain that governs kol-benei-Ever ("all the sons of Eber").
• achi ("brother of", H0251G) — masculine singular construct noun, forming a second construct chain with Yefet ("Japheth", H3315).
• ha-gadol ("the great/elder", H1419K) — definite adjective placed at the very end of the clause, immediately after Yefet, without a Hebrew grammatical marker specifying which preceding noun it qualifies.

What the text says

The clause opens with u-le-Shem ("and to Shem") followed by the passive verb yullad ("was born"), so the grammatical subject of the birth is left unstated — the sentence reports that offspring came into being "to Shem," reinforced by gam-hu ("also he"), which draws a parallel with the preceding genealogical notices about Noah's other sons. The rest of the verse consists of two parallel construct chains describing Shem: avi kol-benei-Ever ("father of all the sons of Eber") and achi Yefet ("brother of Japheth"). The adjective ha-gadol stands directly after Yefet with no intervening word, but Hebrew word order alone does not resolve whether it describes Japheth (the nearest noun) or refers back to Shem (the implied subject of the whole sentence, marked earlier by gam-hu).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final phrase as ἀδελφῷ Ἰάφεθ τοῦ μείζονος ("brother of Japheth, the greater one"), attaching the adjective grammatically to Japheth. The Vulgate similarly reads fratre Japheth majore ("brother of Japheth, the elder"), also linking the adjective to Japheth. RV1909, BSB, and SBLIBRE instead render it as "the older brother of Japheth" (or "hermano mayor de Jafet"), attaching the adjective to Shem instead. Both readings reflect the same Hebrew consonantal sequence; the divergence stems from where each version resolves the syntactic attachment of ha-gadol.