Genesis 27:20

Summary

Isaac asks his son how he managed to find game so quickly, and the reply (given in Jacob's voice, though the speaker is not named again) attributes the swift success to Yehovah's action on his behalf.

Key words

• mihArta ("have you hastened", H4116A) — piel perfect of the root for "to hasten"; the piel form intensifies the action, and the perfect marks it as already completed, framing Isaac's question as about a finished, surprisingly fast event.
• m'tzo' ("to find", H4672) — qal infinitive, paired with mihArta to form the sense "hastened to find" — the infinitive expresses the purpose/complement of the hastening.
• hikRah ("he made happen / caused to encounter", H7136A) — hiphil perfect; the hiphil (causative) stem shifts the meaning from a simple "meeting" to someone actively "causing to meet," with the subject Yehovah as the causer.
• l'faNai ("before me", H6440L + H9020) — construct noun paneh ("face") plus 1st person suffix, literally "to the face of me," an idiom meaning "in front of me" or "for me."
• b'nI ("my son", H1121A + H9020) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, repeating the address "my son" that frames Isaac's question with intimacy.

What the text says

The verse contains two speech acts joined by the narrative va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) formula, repeated twice — once introducing Isaac's question and once introducing the reply. Isaac's question is built from the interrogative mah-zeh ("what is this?", H4100 + H2088), a fixed idiom expressing surprise, followed by the verb pair mihArta limtzo' ("you hastened to find"), where the piel perfect verb plus qal infinitive construction expresses a completed, rapid action — the speed itself is what puzzles Isaac.

The reply does not name its speaker explicitly in the Hebrew; the clause begins with ki ("for/that", H3588A), a particle that can mark either a causal explanation or a quoted assertion. The explanation given is that Yehovah elohekha ("Yehovah your God") "hikrah" — caused an encounter — "l'fanai" ("before me" / "to my face"). The hiphil stem of hikrah places Yehovah as the grammatical agent causing the encounter with the game, rather than describing the game simply "appearing."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the causative verb hikRah with παρέδωκεν ("he handed over/delivered"), a different verbal image than the Hebrew's "caused to meet." The Vulgate expands the clause into "Voluntas Dei fuit ut cito occurreret mihi quod volebam" ("It was God's will that what I wanted would quickly come to me"), introducing "voluntas" ("will") and "quod volebam" ("what I wanted"), concepts not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew clause. The Vulgate also renders Isaac's question as "quomodo... tam cito invenire potuisti" ("how were you able to find so quickly"), shifting from the Hebrew's "what is this, you hastened" idiom to a "how were you able" construction.