Genesis 27:17

Summary

The verse narrates that Rebekah put the savory food and the bread she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob. It concludes the preparation scene, marking the physical transfer of the food from mother to son.

Key words

• ti.Ten ("she put/gave", H5414H) — qal verb in narrative form, indicating a sequential action following prior events in the story; the subject "she" is not written separately but is carried by the verb form itself.
• mat.'a.Mim ("savory food[s]", H4303) — masculine plural noun, referring to the prepared delicacy previously mentioned in the chapter; the plural form suggests more than one dish or a general term for tasty food.
• 'a.Sa.tah ("she had prepared", H6213H) — qal perfect, marking completed action prior to the main verb ti.Ten, showing that the preparation happened before the giving.
• Yad ("[the] hand of", H3027H) — construct noun, grammatically linking to "Jacob" that follows; construct state ties two nouns into a possessive-like relationship ("hand of Jacob").
• be.Na + h ("son" + "her", H1121A + H9024) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, forming "her son," directly identifying Jacob's relation to the subject of the sentence.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around two main verbs: ti.Ten ("she put/gave") and 'a.Sa.tah ("she had prepared"). The first is the main narrative action — introduced by the narrative vav (position 1) — continuing the sequence of events from the preceding verses. The second verb, in perfect aspect, describes an action completed before the main verb, explaining that the food had already been made prior to being handed over. This creates a temporal layering: preparation, then delivery.

The object of the giving is marked twice by the untranslated direct object marker 'et (positions 3 and 7), once for mat.'a.Mim ("savory food[s]") and once for Le.chem ("bread"), showing that both items are direct objects of the same verb ti.Ten. The relative particle 'a.Sher ("which", position 10) introduces a subordinate clause modifying "bread," specifying that it is the bread "which she had prepared" — though the construction may also be read as extending to both food items.

The final phrase uses two construct chains: be.Yad Ya'aqov ("in the hand of Jacob") and Ya'aqov beno ("Jacob, her son"), with the pronominal suffix -Na ("her") attaching "son" back to the subject of the sentence, reinforcing the mother-son relationship without repeating "Rebekah" by name.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the phrase with εἰς τὰς χεῖρας Ἰακὼβ ("into the hands of Jacob," implied by "εἰς τὰς... τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτῆς"), structurally paralleling the Hebrew construct chain, though the Greek text as given omits an explicit noun for "hands" in the visible fragment. The Vulgate's tradidit ("she handed over") corresponds to the concluding action but does not use a term equivalent to yad ("hand", H3027H), rendering the transfer more abstractly than the Hebrew's concrete "into the hand of."