Genesis 33:5

Summary

Esau lifts his eyes and sees the women and children accompanying Jacob, then asks who they are. Jacob answers that they are the children whom God has graciously granted to him, his "servant" (a self-referential term used when addressing Esau).

Key words

• va-yiSSa ("and he lifted up", H5375M) — qal narrative verb, continuing the story sequence; introduces the act of seeing.
• 'eina ("eyes", H5869A) — feminine dual noun in construct, referring to the pair of eyes; construct form links it to the following suffix "his."
• mi ("who?", H4310) — interrogative pronoun opening Esau's direct question about the identity of those present.
• chanan ("he has shown favor to", H2603A) — qal perfect verb, indicating a completed action; describes God's prior granting of the children.
• 'avde-kha ("your servant", H5650 + suffix) — construct noun with second-person suffix, a self-designation Jacob uses when speaking to Esau.

What the text says

The verse is built from a chain of narrative vav-consecutive verbs typical of Hebrew storytelling: va-yiSSa ("and he lifted up"), va-yar ("and he saw", H7200G), va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), repeated twice more for the reported speech. This chain moves the action forward in discrete steps: lifting the eyes, seeing, speaking, and being answered. The object marker 'et (H0853) appears multiple times without independent meaning, simply marking the direct objects "eyes," "the women," "the children," and later "your servant."

Esau's question, mi 'elleh lakh ("who [are] these to you?"), uses the interrogative mi followed by the demonstrative 'elleh ("these", H0428) and a prepositional phrase lakh ("to you") built from the preposition plus the second-person suffix. The construction does not use a verb "to be" — Hebrew often omits it in such questions — so the sentence is literally "who these to-you," rendered idiomatically as "who are these to you?"

Jacob's reply centers on the verb chanan ("he has shown favor to", H2603A), in the qal perfect, describing a completed act by 'Elohim ("God", H0430G, grammatically plural in form though referring to a singular deity in this context). The phrase 'et-'avdekha ("your servant") uses the construct noun 'eved with a second-person suffix, a term Jacob applies to himself when speaking to Esau, placing himself in a subordinate grammatical and social position relative to the addressee.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew mi-'elleh lakh ("who [are] these to you?") as Τί ταῦτά σοί ἐστιν ("what are these to you?"), using the neuter interrogative "what" rather than "who." The Vulgate expands the question into two clauses, "Quid sibi volunt isti? et si ad te pertinent?" ("What do these want for themselves? And do they belong to you?"), adding interpretive material not present in the Hebrew's single short question. The Vulgate also renders chanan ("he has shown favor to") as "donavit" ("he has given"), shifting from the Hebrew's connotation of gracious favor to a more neutral verb of giving.