Genesis 25:23

Summary

Yehovah answers Rebekah with a poetic oracle in four short parallel clauses, announcing that she carries two separate nations in her womb, that they will divide from one another, and that in their future relationship the older will serve the younger. The verse is structured as Hebrew synonymous/antithetic parallelism typical of oracular speech.

Key words

• goyim ("nations", H1471A) — masculine plural noun, paired with she.nei ("two", H8147) in construct, forming "two of nations."
• le'ummim ("peoples", H3816) — plural counterpart to goyim, used with the same numeral construct, creating parallel repetition of the "two" theme.
• yipparedu ("they will separate", H6504) — niphal (passive/reflexive) imperfect; the niphal stem indicates the two peoples will divide themselves or be divided, not that an external agent divides them.
• ye'emats ("it will be strong", H0553) — qal imperfect of a root meaning strength; paired with le'om mile'om ("a people from a people") to express comparison — one surpassing the other in strength.
• tsa'ir ("the young [one]", H6810) — adjective functioning as a substantive, contrasted with rav ("the great [one]", H7227A) in the final clause.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer Yehovah lah ("and Yehovah said to her"), introducing direct divine speech. The oracle itself consists of four short clauses built on tight grammatical parallelism. The first two clauses each use the construct pair she.nei + plural noun ("two of nations" / "two of peoples"), locating the pair first be-vitnekh ("in your womb") and then mi-me'ayikh ("from your inward parts") — a movement from static location to point of origin. The verb yipparedu, in the niphal, closes this first half of the verse and applies to both preceding nouns, signaling that separation is the shared outcome for both nations/peoples.

The second half shifts to two clauses built on parallel repetition of le'om ("a people", H3816) — first with the preposition min used comparatively ("a people more than a people will be strong"), then contrasting rav ("the great one") and tsa'ir ("the young one") as grammatical subjects of ya'avod ("it will serve", H5647G). Both final clauses use imperfect verbs, marking future or ongoing action rather than a single completed event. The syntax leaves ambiguous, at the grammatical level alone, which entity is grammatical subject versus object in the rav...tsa'ir clause — the word order places rav first as apparent subject of ya'avod, with tsa'ir following as the one served.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders rav ("great") as ὁ μείζων ("the greater/older") and tsa'ir ("young") as τῷ ἐλάσσονι ("the lesser/younger"), using comparative adjectives where the Hebrew has plain adjectives functioning substantively. The Vulgate similarly uses major and minori, comparative forms, aligning with the LXX's comparative framing rather than the Hebrew's non-comparative rav/tsa'ir construction.