Genesis 27:36

Summary

Esau responds to Isaac after learning that Jacob received the blessing meant for him. He plays on his brother's name, states that Jacob has "supplanted" him twice — once regarding the birthright, once regarding the blessing — and then asks his father directly whether any blessing remains for him.

Key words

• ya'aKov ("Jacob", H3290) — the proper name, placed immediately before the wordplay verb, creating the pun the sentence builds around.
• ya'keveni ("he has supplanted me", H6117) — qal narrative verb from the same root associated with "heel" ('aqev), sharing consonants with the name Ya'aqov; carries the 1st-person pronominal suffix "me" (H9030) as direct object.
• zeh pa'amayim ("this, two times", H2088 + H6471) — demonstrative plus a feminine dual noun, explicitly marking the action as repeated exactly twice.
• bekhorati ("my birthright", H1062) — feminine singular construct noun with 1st-person suffix, naming the first thing taken.
• birkhati / berakhah ("my blessing" / "a blessing", H1293) — the same noun appears first with a possessive suffix (birkhati, "my blessing," already taken) and then without one (berakhah, "a blessing," in the final question), marking a shift from a completed loss to an open request.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), introducing Esau's direct speech. His first statement begins with the compound particle ha-khi (H9008 + H3588A), an interrogative-conditional construction that frames a rhetorical exclamation about the name Ya'aqov. Immediately after, the verb va-ya'keveni shares its root consonants with the name just mentioned, so the Hebrew text itself displays a phonetic and semantic link between "Jacob" and "he has supplanted me" — a connection visible only in the source language, since the verb's Strong number (H6117) reflects a distinct lexical entry from the proper name (H3290) even though they are built on the same root.

The clause structure then lists two parallel completed actions, both using the qal perfect laKach ("he took", H3947G): first et-bekhorati laKach ("my birthright he took"), then, introduced by hinneh ("here!", H2009) and 'attah ("now", H6258), laKach birkhati ("he has taken my blessing"). The repetition of the same verb for both objects (birthright and blessing) presents the two losses as structurally identical events, differing only in their direct object.

The final sentence repeats va-yomer ("and he said") as a second speech-introduction, followed by another interrogative construction, ha-lo' ("is it not...", H9008 + H3808), governing the perfect verb 'atzalta ("you have reserved", H0680) and closing with the bare noun berakhah ("a blessing", H1293), now without a possessive suffix — grammatically leaving open whether any blessing at all remains, rather than referring back to the specific one already taken.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the wordplay explicitly as Dikaiōs eklēthē to onoma autou Iakōb ("rightly was his name called Jacob"), making interpretive the connection that the Hebrew leaves as a root-pun; it also translates ya'keveni as epternisen ("he has tripped/undermined by the heel"), a Greek verb built on pterna ("heel"), preserving the heel-image differently from the Hebrew's shared consonantal root. The Vulgate's supplantavit ("he has tripped up") follows a similar heel-based image. The Hebrew's final noun berakhah lacks a possessive suffix, while the Vulgate supplies benedictionem meam ("my blessing"), and the LXX likewise reads moi eulogian ("a blessing for me"), both making explicit a possession that the Hebrew phrasing leaves grammatically unspecified.