Genesis 26:27

Summary

Isaac confronts the men who had previously driven him away, asking why they now come to him after having shown hostility and having expelled him from among them. The verse reports his direct speech, structured as a rhetorical question followed by an accusation.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — narrative vav plus qal verb, marking the next event in the story sequence and introducing direct speech.
• maddua ("why?", H4069) — interrogative particle opening the rhetorical question.
• batem ("you have come", H0935G) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural, describing a completed action prior to the moment of speaking.
• senetem ("you hate", H8130) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural; as a perfect of a stative verb it describes an ongoing state ("you hate/have hated") rather than a single past event.
• va-teshalechu ("and you sent away", H7971G) — piel narrative form, 2nd person masculine plural; the piel stem intensifies the action, suggesting a forceful or deliberate expulsion rather than a simple departure.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built in three linked clauses. First, maddua batem elay ("why have you come to me") uses the perfect batem to mark the arrival as a completed fact prior to speaking. Second, ve-'attem senetem oti ("and you hate me") places the independent pronoun 'attem ("you", H0859D) before the verb, giving it emphatic contrastive weight — "you, for your part, hate me." The perfect senetem here functions as a stative expression of an existing attitude rather than a discrete past action. Third, va-teshallechuni me'ittekhem ("and you sent me away from you") uses the piel stem of shalach (H7971G), which intensifies the basic sense "send" into "drive out" or "expel forcefully," followed by me'ittekhem ("from with you," H0854 + H9036), emphasizing separation from their company.

The grammatical progression — completed arrival, ongoing hatred, forceful expulsion — builds Isaac's accusation as a logical sequence: despite past hostility and expulsion, they have now returned to him.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXXSWETE) renders only two actions — "why have you come to me and sent me away from you" — omitting any verb corresponding to senetem ("you hate," H8130) found in the Hebrew. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) preserves the notion of hatred but restructures it as a relative clause, "hominem quem odistis" ("a man whom you have hated"), inserting the noun "hominem" ("man"), which has no corresponding word in the Hebrew text.