Genesis 32:25

Summary

The verse narrates that the unnamed figure wrestling with Jacob, seeing that he could not prevail over him, touched the socket of Jacob's hip, causing it to be dislocated during their struggle. The Hebrew text builds a chain of narrative actions connected by the vav-consecutive, moving from perception to touch to result.

Key words

• yaChol ("he prevailed", H3201) — qal perfect, marking the completed inability of the figure to overcome Jacob before the next action occurs.
• yiGa' ("he touched", H5060) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), the pivotal verb of contact that triggers the dislocation.
• khaf ("socket of", H3709I) — feminine singular construct noun, meaning literally "hollow" or "socket", here specifying the hip joint as the point of contact.
• Teka' ("it was dislocated", H3363) — qal narrative verb, third person feminine, agreeing with kaf ("socket") as its subject — grammatically it is the "socket" that becomes dislocated, not Jacob himself.
• he'aveK ("wrestled", H0079) — niphal infinitive construct, a passive/reflexive stem conveying mutual, reciprocal struggle ("wrestling with one another"), attached to the preposition be ("when/in").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is structured as a sequence of four narrative verbs (vayyar, vayyiga', vatteqa', all with the vav-consecutive pattern), each advancing the action: seeing, touching, and dislocating. The subordinate clause introduced by ki ("that", H3588A) plus the negation lo' ("not", H3808) and the perfect verb yakhol ("he prevailed", H3201) explains the motive for the following action — the figure acts because he was not prevailing "to him" (lo, H9005+H9033, "to/against him").

Grammatically notable is that the subject of tteqa' ("it was dislocated", H3363) is kaf yerekh Ya'aqov ("the socket of Jacob's thigh", H3709I + H3409 + H3290), a feminine noun phrase — the verb's feminine form confirms that it is the joint itself, not Jacob as a whole, that is grammatically described as being dislocated. The final clause uses the niphal infinitive he'aveqo ("his wrestling", H0079) with a pronominal suffix, indicating ongoing mutual action ("in his wrestling with him"), which temporally frames when the dislocation occurred — during the struggle, not before or after it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yiga' ("he touched", H5060) with hēpsato ("touched"), matching the Hebrew sense of contact, while the Vulgate's tetigit nervum femoris ("touched the sinew of the thigh") adds nervum ("sinew/tendon"), a specification not present in the Hebrew kaf yerekh ("socket of the thigh"). The Vulgate also renders Teka' ("it was dislocated") as statim emarcuit ("immediately withered/weakened"), differing from the Hebrew's specific sense of joint dislocation found in yaqa' (H3363) and from the LXX's enarkēsen ("grew numb"), which likewise diverges from the Hebrew's dislocation imagery.