Genesis 27:39

Summary

Isaac responds to Esau after having already given Jacob the primary blessing, using the verb ana ("he answered", H6030B) and amar ("he said", H0559) to introduce a saying built on the same phrase used for Jacob's blessing: "fatness of the earth" and "dew of the heavens." The sentence structure repeats a preposition twice, and this repetition is the grammatical center of the verse.

Key words

• va-yaan ("and he answered", H6030B) — qal narrative form, marking the next event in the story sequence: Isaac's response to Esau's earlier plea.
• shmanei ("fatnesses of", H4924A) — masculine plural construct; construct state binds it to ha-aretz ("the earth", H0776H), producing "fatnesses of the earth."
• mi ("from/away from", H9006) — a preposition prefixed twice in this verse, once to shmanei and once to tal ("dew", H2919). Its exact force (source/partitive vs. separation/privative) is not fixed by the form alone.
• yihyeh ("it will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, giving the statement future or ongoing force: "your dwelling will be…"
• me-al ("from above", H5921A) — a spatial noun/preposition closing the verse, reinforcing that the dew comes from the sky's height.

What the text says

The verse is built as a two-part parallel: mi-shmanei ha-aretz ("from the fatnesses of the earth") and u-mi-tal ha-shamayim me-al ("and from the dew of the heavens from above"), both governed by the single verb yihyeh moshavekha ("your dwelling will be"). Grammatically, the same preposition min (H9006) attaches to both "fatness" and "dew," creating a balanced structure identical in form to the blessing given earlier to Jacob (which uses the same construction). The construct chains shmanei ha-aretz and tal ha-shamayim function like English "of" phrases, tying the abstract nouns "fatness" and "dew" to their sources "earth" and "heavens."

The interpretive difficulty embedded in the Hebrew itself is that min (H9006) can indicate either a partitive/source sense ("some of," "sharing in") or a privative/separative sense ("away from," "lacking"). The Hebrew consonants and vocalization here do not resolve which sense applies; only context and comparison with the parallel blessing to Jacob can guide a reader, and the data given does not settle this decisively.

Differences between versions

The versions split along exactly this ambiguity. The Vulgate renders the preposition as "in" (in pinguedine terrae... in rore caeli), and the Spanish RV1909/SBLIBRE follow a similar partitive sense ("en grosuras de la tierra," "del rocío de los cielos" / "riquezas de la tierra... rocío que cae del cielo"), treating the blessing as granting Esau a share in the earth's fatness and heaven's dew. The BSB instead renders min as privative, "away from the richness of the land... away from the dew of heaven above," treating the blessing as one of exclusion. The LXX's apo ("from") with genitive is compatible with either reading and does not itself disambiguate the sense found in the Hebrew min (H9006).