Genesis 27:16

Summary

Genesis 27:16 describes Rebekah's action of covering Jacob's hands and neck with the skins of young goats, part of the deception preparing him to receive Isaac's blessing in place of Esau. The verse specifies exactly which body parts were covered: the hands and the smooth (hairless) part of the neck.

Key words

• hilBishah ("she clothed", H3847) — Hiphil (causative) perfect, third person feminine singular: the causative stem indicates Rebekah made the skins cover or dress Jacob, rather than Jacob dressing himself; the perfect aspect marks this as a completed action.
• 'oRot ("skins of", H5785) — feminine plural construct, linking to the following noun gedaYei to form the phrase "skins of the kids."
• gedaYei ("kids of", H1423) — masculine plural construct, itself governing ha'iZim ("the goats", H5795), producing the double construct chain "skins of the kids of the goats."
• chelKat ("smooth part of", H2513B) — feminine singular construct, describing a specific quality (smoothness/hairlessness) of the neck, construct with tzavaRav ("his neck", H6677A).
• yaDav ("his hands", H3027G) — dual construct form with pronominal suffix, referring to both hands as a pair.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence places the direct object first: 'et 'oRot gedaYei ha'iZim ("the skins of the kids of the goats"), marked by the untranslated object marker 'Et (H0853), before the verb hilBishah ("she clothed"). This construction is a double genitive chain — skins of kids of goats — which some translations simplify to "skins of the young goats," collapsing the two-step construct relationship visible in the Hebrew.

The verb hilBishah is Hiphil, the causative stem of the root meaning "to clothe" (H3847). This grammatical form indicates that Rebekah is the causative agent making the skins function as a covering on Jacob's body — the action is done to Jacob's hands and neck, not that Jacob dresses himself. The two locations are marked by parallel prepositional phrases: 'al-yaDav ("on his hands," dual construct with suffix) and 'al chelKat tzavaRav ("on the smooth part of his neck"). The noun chelKat (H2513B) specifically denotes the "smooth" or "hairless" quality of the neck area, distinguishing it as the region requiring covering to imitate hairiness.

Differences between versions

The LXX uses periétheken ("she put around") rather than a verb of "clothing," a different lexical choice from the Hebrew's causative "she clothed." The LXX also renders chelKat tzavaRav as ta gymna tou trachēlou ("the naked/bare parts of the neck"), emphasizing nakedness rather than smoothness. The Vulgate's colli nuda ("the bare parts of the neck") follows this same sense of bareness, aligning with the LXX rather than the Hebrew's more specific "smooth" quality.