Genesis 28:8

Summary

The verse states that Esau perceived (wayyar, H7200G) that the Canaanite women were regarded negatively by his father Isaac. The Hebrew expresses this through the idiom "evil in the eyes of," meaning something was judged unfavorably by someone.

Key words

• i.Yar' ("he saw", H7200G) — qal wayyiqtol form; the narrative vav-consecutive marks this as the next event in the story sequence: "and he saw/perceived."
• ra'ot ("[were] displeasing/evil", H7451H) — feminine plural adjective, agreeing with benot ("daughters"); it functions as the predicate of the subordinate clause introduced by ki ("that", H3588A).
• benot ("daughters of", H1323G) — feminine plural construct, forming a genitive chain with Kena'an ("Canaan", H3667A): "daughters of Canaan."
• 'einei ("eyes of", H5869I) — feminine dual construct of "eye," used with the preposition be ("in", H9003) to form the idiom "in the eyes of," meaning "in the judgment/opinion of."
• aviv ("his father", H0001G + H9023) — masculine singular construct noun with a third-person pronominal suffix, specifying whose judgment is meant: Isaac's.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative verb wayyar ("and he saw," H7200G), which in Biblical Hebrew narrative sequences often carries the sense of "perceived" or "realized" rather than simple physical sight. The subject is Esav ("Esau," H6215G). What Esau perceives is introduced by the particle ki (H3588A), which here functions as a subordinating conjunction meaning "that," opening a content clause.

Within that clause, the construction is a nominal (verbless) sentence: ra'ot benot Kena'an be-'einei Yitzchak aviv — literally "evil [are] the daughters of Canaan in the eyes of Isaac his father." The adjective ra'ot ("displeasing," H7451H) agrees in gender and number with benot ("daughters," H1323G), the feminine plural construct noun forming a genitive link to Kena'an ("Canaan," H3667A). There is no explicit verb "to be" in Hebrew; the adjective itself carries the predicative force.

The phrase be-'einei Yitzchak aviv ("in the eyes of Isaac his father") is a fixed idiom in Biblical Hebrew indicating subjective judgment or evaluation, not literal vision. The construct chain 'einei...Yitzchak ("eyes of Isaac") is further specified by aviv ("his father," H0001G with suffix H9023), clarifying the family relationship and reinforcing whose perspective is at stake.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew adjectival predicate ra'ot ("were displeasing") with a present-tense verb, εἰσιν πονηραί ("are evil"), and replaces the idiom be-'einei ("in the eyes of") with ἐναντίον ("before/in the sight of"), a similar but not identical spatial-idiomatic expression.

The Vulgate diverges more substantially: it adds probans ("testing/proving"), a verb absent from the Hebrew, and converts the predication into a negated verbal clause, non libenter aspiceret ("did not gladly look upon"), rather than preserving the Hebrew's adjectival idiom "were evil in the eyes of." The modern translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) render the sense as disapproval or displeasure, consistent with the Hebrew idiom, though BSB's "disapproved" and SBLIBRE's "no le agradaban" restate the idiom as a verb rather than an adjectival construction.