Genesis 27:22

Summary

Jacob approaches his father Isaac, who touches him physically and then speaks a statement contrasting what he hears with what he feels: the voice matches Jacob, but the hands match Esau. The verse records Isaac's perception in his own words, marking the tension between auditory and tactile evidence.

Key words

• va-yi.Gash ("and he drew near", H5066G) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine, opening the scene with sequential action.
• va-y.mu.She.hu ("and he felt him", H4959 + H9033) — qal narrative verb with pronominal suffix "him," indicating direct physical contact as the next sequential act.
• ha-Kol ("the voice", H6963A) — noun with definite article, absolute form, naming the subject of Isaac's first observation.
• Kol ("voice of", H6963A) — same noun in construct form, linking to Ya'akov, forming the predicate "voice of Jacob."
• ye.Dei ("hands of", H3027G) — dual noun in construct form, linking to 'Esav, forming the predicate "hands of Esau."

What the text says

The verse is built on three sequential narrative verbs joined by the narrative va ("and"): va-yi.Gash ("he drew near"), va-y.mu.She.hu ("he felt him"), and va-yomer ("he said"). This chain presents approach, touch, and speech as one continuous action, with Jacob as subject of the first verb and Isaac (implied) as subject of the second and third.

Isaac's spoken statement uses a repeated grammatical pattern: a noun in absolute form followed by the same noun in construct form. Ha-Kol ("the voice," with definite article) is followed by Kol ("voice of," construct) plus Ya'akov ("Jacob"), producing "the voice, [the] voice of Jacob." The same structure repeats with ha-yadayim ("the hands," dual, with article) followed by yedei ("hands of," dual construct) plus 'Esav ("Esau"). This doubling of the same noun (absolute then construct) is a feature of the Hebrew construction not always visible in translation, where the repetition can be smoothed into "is the voice of" or "are the hands of."

The noun yadayim ("hands") appears in dual form, marking Isaac's perception of two hands, consistent with the tactile detail of the account.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the doubled construction similarly in Greek (φωνὴ φωνὴ, χεῖρες χεῖρες), preserving the noun-repetition pattern seen in the Hebrew. The Vulgate expands slightly, adding "quidem" ("indeed") and "sed" ("but") — words not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew — to make the contrast between voice and hands more explicit for the Latin reader. The Hebrew text itself does not contain a conjunction equivalent to "but"; the contrast is conveyed only through the parallel construct-noun structure and the ve ("and") joining the two clauses.