Genesis 26:35

Summary

Genesis 26:35 states that the women just introduced (Esau's wives) "were" morat ruach ("bitterness of spirit") to Isaac and Rebekah. The verse closes the report about Esau's marriages by describing the emotional effect these women had on his parents.

Key words

• tihyeina ("they were", H1961) — qal verb, feminine plural, narrative form continuing the story; the plural subject points back to the women mentioned in the preceding verse, not to Esau alone.
• Morat ("bitterness of", H4786) — feminine singular noun in the construct state, meaning it must be linked to the following noun rather than standing alone.
• Ruach ("spirit", H7307) — the noun completing the construct chain with Morat, together forming the fixed expression "bitterness of spirit."
• le-Yitzchak ("to Isaac", H3327 with H9005) — the preposition le marks Isaac as the recipient or target of this "bitterness."
• u-le-Rivkah ("and to Rebekah", H7259 with H9002/H9005) — the same preposition repeated with the conjunction u, adding Rebekah as a second, equally affected recipient.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has a simple structure: subject (implied, feminine plural, referring back to the wives named in the prior verse) + verb tihyeina + predicate noun phrase Morat Ruach + two prepositional phrases marking Isaac and Rebekah as those affected. The construct phrase Morat Ruach functions here as a predicate nominative — the women "became" or "were" this state of bitterness, rather than merely causing it as an external action. This construction is common in Biblical Hebrew for describing an emotional or relational condition attributed to a person or persons.

The repetition of the preposition le before both "Isaac" and "Rebekah" (rather than using a single preposition for both names) gives each parent separate grammatical standing as a recipient of this bitterness, which some translations flatten into a single shared object ("brought grief to Isaac and Rebekah").

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders the phrase with ἦσαν ἐρίζουσαι ("they were quarreling/contending"), a dynamic, active description of conflict, differing from the Hebrew's static predicate "bitterness of spirit." The Vulgate uses offenderant animum ("they had offended the mind/spirit"), which shifts the construction to a causative action performed by the women upon Isaac and Rebekah's animus ("mind" or "spirit"), rather than describing the women as being that bitterness, as the Hebrew construct chain does.