Genesis 25:33

Summary

Jacob demands an oath from his brother before completing the transaction; the brother swears, and the sale of the birthright to Jacob is finalized. The Hebrew text never names the seller directly in this verse — he is referred to only by pronominal suffixes, continuing the referent from the previous verses.

Key words

• hishave'ah ("swear", H7650) — niphal imperative with paragogic he (letter 5 in the breakdown), giving the command extra emphatic force: "swear to me!"
• kayyom ("as the day", H3117) — noun with prefixed preposition and article; functions adverbially, meaning something like "this very day" or "right now."
• yishava' ("he swore", H7650) — same root as the imperative, now in niphal narrative form (va-yiqtol), showing the brother's compliance as the next event in sequence.
• bekhorato ("his birthright", H1062) — feminine singular noun in construct state with a possessive suffix, meaning "the birthright belonging to him."
• yimkor ("he sold", H4376) — qal narrative verb; the subject is only marked by the verb's third-person masculine form, not by an explicit noun.

What the text says

The verse is built from three chained narrative clauses (vayyo'mer, vayyisha'va', vayyimkor), each introduced by the narrative vav, producing a rapid sequence: "and he said... and he swore... and he sold." Jacob is named explicitly only once, at the very start (ya'aqov, H3290) and again at the very end (le-ya'aqov, "to Jacob"). The other party in the exchange — the brother who swears and sells — is never named in this verse; he is tracked entirely through third-person pronominal suffixes attached to prepositions (lo, "to him"; bekhorato, "his birthright"). This means the Hebrew reader must supply the referent from the surrounding narrative rather than from the verse itself.

The imperative hishave'ah carries a paragogic he, a grammatical feature that intensifies the demand without changing its basic meaning. The construct phrase bekhorat-o ("birthright of-his") ties the abstract noun "birthright" directly to the possessor through the construct chain plus suffix, a common Hebrew way of expressing possession without a separate word for "his."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text leaves the seller unnamed throughout this verse, relying on pronouns. The LXX and Vulgate both make the referent explicit: the LXX text as given inserts "Ἠσαὺ" ("Esau") as the subject of the selling clause, and the Vulgate likewise reads "Juravit ei Esau et vendidit primogenita," naming Esau directly in both the swearing and selling clauses. This represents an explicitation of the subject that the Hebrew accomplishes only through context and pronominal reference. The LXX version also renders the first clause as "Jacob said to him," making Jacob the explicit subject where the Hebrew's vayyo'mer ya'aqov already names him, so no divergence there — the difference lies specifically in how the second party is identified.