Genesis 25:32

Summary

Esau responds to Jacob (in the surrounding narrative, not quoted here) by declaring that he is on the verge of dying, and asks rhetorically what use a birthright is to him under that circumstance. The verse is his direct speech, introduced by the narrative formula "and he said."

Key words

• hoLekh ("[am] going", H1980) — qal participle, masculine singular; combined with 'anoKhi ("I", H0595) it expresses an ongoing state ("I am going/about to..."), not a completed action.
• laMut ("to die", H4191 with H9005) — qal infinitive preceded by the preposition la ("to"); together with hoLekh it forms the construction "going to die," i.e., an imminent action.
• lamah-zeh ("what/why is this", H4100 + H2088) — interrogative pronoun mah combined with the demonstrative zeh; this pairing intensifies the question, functioning like "what then" or "why on earth."
• li ("to me", H9005 + H9030) — preposition with first-person pronominal suffix, marking the beneficiary/possessor being questioned: the birthright's usefulness "to me."
• bekhoRah ("birthright", H1062) — feminine singular noun, the object whose value Esau questions, appearing without the definite article in the Hebrew.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb vaYomer ("and he said", H0559), a standard qal narrative form that simply advances the story by introducing direct speech. Esau's speech begins with hinneh ("here!", H2009), an interjection often used to draw attention to a present state of affairs, followed by 'anoKhi ("I", H0595) — an independent pronoun that, combined with the participle hoLekh ("going", H1980), builds the phrase "I am going," which is then extended by the infinitive laMut ("to die", H4191) to yield "I am going to die" or "I am about to die." This participle + infinitive construction conveys an unfolding or imminent condition rather than a single completed event.

The second half of the verse is a rhetorical question built on lamah-zeh ("why/what is this", H4100 + H2088), a combination that Hebrew grammar uses to sharpen or emphasize the interrogative beyond a plain "why." The phrase li ("to me", H9030) marks Esau as the one for whom the bekhoRah ("birthright", H1062) would or would not hold value. The noun bekhoRah itself carries no definite article in the Hebrew text, presenting the birthright generically as a concept rather than as a specific, previously defined item.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew laMut ("to die") with the infinitive τελευτᾷν ("to die/end"), matching the sense of imminent death, while the Vulgate uses morior ("I am dying"), a present-tense verb rather than a participial "going to die" construction. The Vulgate also translates the interrogative lamah-zeh...bekhoRah as "quid mihi proderunt primogenita" ("what will the birthright profit me"), introducing the verb "profit" (prodesse) which is not present in the Hebrable wording, which asks simply "what is this to me" without an explicit verb of benefit. The LXX similarly adds ταῦτα ("these things") alongside τὰ πρωτοτοκεῖα ("the birthright-rights"), a plural and demonstrative expansion not present in the singular Hebrew noun bekhoRah.