Genesis 33:9

Summary

Esau responds to Jacob's offer of gifts, declining them by stating he already has enough ("much") for himself, addressing Jacob as "my brother," and telling him to keep what belongs to him. The verse uses a possession idiom and a jussive verb to frame the refusal as a wish rather than a command.

Key words

• yesh ("there [is]", H3426) — existential particle combined with the preposition li ("to me") to form the idiom "I have," literally "there is to me."
• rav ("much", H7227A) — masculine singular adjective functioning as a predicate noun, indicating sufficiency rather than a specific quantity.
• achi ("my brother", H0251G + suffix H9020) — construct noun with 1st person suffix, a vocative address embedded mid-sentence.
• yehi ("let it be", H1961) — qal jussive of the verb "to be," expressing a wish or permission rather than a plain statement of fact.
• asher-lakh ("that which [belongs] to you", H0834A + H9005/H9032) — relative clause built on the same possessive idiom (le- + pronoun) used earlier for "I have," creating a grammatical parallel between what Esau has and what Jacob has.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), introducing direct speech from Esav (H6215G). Esau's first clause, yesh-li rav ("there is to me much"), uses the existential particle yesh plus the preposition li ("to me") — a standard Hebrew construction for expressing possession without a verb "to have." The predicate rav is a bare adjective, not a specific number, so the clause states sufficiency in general terms rather than naming an amount.

The vocative achi ("my brother") interrupts the flow, addressing Jacob directly before the second clause. That clause, yehi lekha asher-lakh ("let it be to you, that which is to you"), repeats the same le- + pronoun possessive pattern seen in li above, now with the 2nd person suffix (-kha, "to you"). The verb yehi is jussive, not indicative — grammatically it expresses a wish ("let it be") rather than a flat assertion that the goods already belong to Jacob. The relative clause asher-lakh ("that which is to you") functions as the subject of yehi, referring back to the gifts Jacob had offered, and mirrors the possessive syntax of the opening clause, linking Esau's stated sufficiency to his instruction that Jacob retain his own property.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew rav ("much", H7227A) is a singular adjective expressing sufficiency in general. The LXX renders this as πολλά ("many things," plural), and the Vulgate similarly uses plurima ("very many things," plural) — both shifting the sense from a general statement of sufficiency to a plural quantity of possessions. The Hebrew jussive yehi ("let it be") is matched by the Greek imperative-like ἔστω and the Latin subjunctive sint, both preserving the wish/permission nuance found in the Hebrew form.