Genesis 26:12

Summary

The verse reports that Isaac sowed crops in "that land" and reaped an agricultural yield described as "a hundred she'arim" ("measures", H8180) in "that year", followed by the notice that Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) blessed him. The sentence is built as three consecutive narrative actions: sowing, finding/yielding, and being blessed.

Key words

• yiz.Ra' ("he sowed", H2232) — qal narrative verb, simple past action, no intensity marker; establishes the agricultural act that begins the sequence.
• yim.Tza' ("he found", H4672) — qal narrative verb; here it functions as "he obtained/reaped" rather than a literal physical discovery, describing the outcome of the sowing.
• me.'Ah ("one hundred", H3967) — feminine cardinal number modifying she'arim, quantifying the yield.
• she.'a.Rim ("measures", H8180) — masculine plural noun; the specific unit being multiplied a hundred times.
• y.va.ra.Khe.hu ("he blessed him", H1288) — piel narrative verb with 3ms pronominal suffix hu ("him", H9033); the piel stem marks an intensive/factitive action, and the suffix attaches the object directly to the verb without a separate pronoun.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence chains three verbs with the narrative vav ("and", H9001): yiz.Ra', yim.Tza', and y.va.ra.Khe.hu, giving the sequence a "and then... and then... and then..." rhythm typical of Hebrew narrative prose. The first two verbs share a parallel construction: each is followed by a prepositional phrase with the definite article and the pronoun hiv' ("that", H1931) — ba.'A.retz ha.hiv' ("in that land") and ba.sha.Nah ha.hiv' ("in that year") — creating a symmetrical structure that ties the location and the time of the yield together.

The object of yim.Tza' is me.'Ah she.'a.Rim, literally "a hundred measures," a cardinal number plus a plural noun with no explicit reference back to a base quantity sown. The Hebrew does not state "a hundredfold" as a ratio; it simply names the resulting quantity of measures found.

The final clause places the subject Yehovah after the verb y.va.ra.Khe.hu, which already carries the object as a suffix (hu, "him"). This is typical Hebrew verb-first order, and the piel stem of barakh ("bless", H1288) marks the blessing as a completed, intensified act rather than a simple state.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew me.'Ah she.'a.Rim ("a hundred measures") is rendered in the LXX as ἑκατοστεύουσαν κριθήν ("a hundredfold of barley"), specifying a grain (barley) not named in the Hebrew text. The Vulgate renders it as centuplum ("a hundredfold"), expressing the quantity as a multiplication ratio rather than a count of "measures." The Hebrew noun she'arim itself denotes measures/units, while both LXX and Vulgate interpret this as a proportional yield ("hundredfold") rather than a literal unit count.