Genesis 25:31

Summary

Jacob answers Esau's request for stew with a counter-demand: he tells him to sell his birthright, using an emphatic imperative reinforced by a temporal phrase meaning "today" or "this very day." The sentence is short and direct, structured as reported speech introduced by a narrative verb.

Key words

• i.Yo.mer ("he said", H0559) — qal narrative verb, marks the transition into direct speech.
• mikh.Ra ("sell", H4376) — qal imperative, command form addressed to Esau.
• h ("!", H9012) — paragogic he attached to the imperative, an emphatic ending reinforcing the command.
• Yom ("day", H3117) — combined with the preposition-article khai. ("as the", H9004) to form kayyom, literally "as the day," an idiom pointing to immediacy.
• be.kho.ra.te. ("birthright", H1062) — feminine singular noun in construct form, followed by the suffix Kha ("your", H9021), giving "your birthright."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said"), which simply signals that a new speech act begins; the subject Ya'aqov ("Jacob") follows immediately. The content of the speech is compact: mikhrah is an imperative built on the root "to sell," and it carries a paragogic he, a grammatical ending that Biblical Hebrew often uses to intensify a command — so the form is not a neutral request but a marked, forceful directive.

The phrase kayyom, made of the preposition-plus-article ka ("as the") and the noun yom ("day"), functions idiomatically to mean "today" or "this very day," expressing urgency or immediacy rather than a literal reference to daylight. The object of the sale is introduced by the untranslatable object marker 'et, followed by the construct noun bekhoratkha ("your birthright"), where the base noun bekhorah ("birthright") takes the second-person masculine suffix -kha ("your"). The sentence closes with li ("to me"), a preposition with a first-person suffix marking Jacob as the recipient of the transaction. The whole clause is thus a tightly built imperative sentence: verb–temporal marker–object–object marker–object noun+suffix–indirect object.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds an explicit addressee, "τῷ Ἠσαύ" ("to Esau"), not present in the Hebrew clause itself (though clear from context). The LXX also renders kayyom as σήμερον ("today"), placed after the verb rather than modifying it directly as in Hebrew. The Vulgate ("Vende mihi primogenita tua") omits any rendering of kayyom altogether, dropping the temporal/emphatic element. Among modern versions, RV1909 keeps the temporal sense ("en este día"), while BSB translates kayyom as "First," shifting the nuance from "today" to sequential priority.