Genesis 25:29

Summary

The verse narrates that Jacob cooked a pot of stew while Esau returned from the field in a state of exhaustion. The Hebrew presents this as two linked events joined by narrative sequence, ending in a short nominal clause describing Esau's physical condition.

Key words

• va-yyazed ("he had cooked", H2102) — hiphil (causative) verb with narrative vav; the causative stem marks Jacob as the one who produced the cooked result, not merely engaging in an ongoing action.
• nazid ("cooked food", H5138) — masculine singular noun, the direct object of the cooking; a generic term for boiled or stewed food, not specified further (e.g., no ingredient named here).
• min-ha-sadeh ("from the field", H4480A + H9009 + H7704G) — prepositional phrase with definite article, marking the geographic origin of Esau's movement.
• hu' ("he", H1931) — independent personal pronoun; its presence is grammatically unnecessary if the verb already carries person marking, so its use here adds emphasis on Esau as the subject of the following description.
• 'ayef ("exhausted", H5889) — adjective, masculine singular; describes a state, not an action. There is no verb "to be" in Hebrew, so hu' 'ayef is a nominal (verbless) clause: "he [was] exhausted."

What the text says

The verse is built from two narrative-vav clauses (marked by va-yyazed and va-yyavo'), a syntactic pattern that presents Jacob's cooking and Esau's arrival as sequential story events: "and Jacob cooked... and Esau came...". This chaining is typical of Hebrew narrative prose and signals temporal succession rather than simultaneity, though the two actions may overlap.

The final segment, ve-hu' 'ayef ("and he [was] exhausted"), breaks from the verbal narrative chain into a nominal clause. Because 'ayef is an adjective and not a finite verb, Hebrew grammar states Esau's condition as a static description attached to his return, rather than as a further narrated action. The independent pronoun hu' preceding the adjective gives explicit emphasis to the subject, underscoring that it is specifically Esau who is in this state upon arrival from the field.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew adjective 'ayef ("exhausted", H5889) denotes general weariness without specifying its cause. The LXX renders this with the participle ἐκλείπων ("failing/growing faint"), which suggests a process of weakening rather than a fixed state. The Vulgate uses lassus ("weary"), close to the Hebrew's general sense of tiredness. The Spanish SBLIBRE and English BSB render the condition as hunger-specific ("agotado por el hambre," "famished"), an interpretive addition not present in the Hebrew adjective itself, which speaks only of exhaustion, not explicitly of hunger.