Genesis 35:28

Summary

The verse states the total lifespan of Isaac: one hundred and eighty years. It is a formulaic notice of age using the construct pattern "the days of [name] were X years."

Key words

• va-yihyu ("and they were", H1961) — narrative vav + qal verb, third person masculine plural, opening the clause and marking narrative sequence ("and then the days were...").
• yemei ("days of", H3117G) — masculine plural construct form, linking grammatically to the following proper name; the construct chain literally reads "days-of Isaac."
• me'at ("one hundred", H3967) — feminine singular construct numeral, joined directly to the following noun shanah.
• shanah ("year", H8141) — feminine singular noun, appearing twice, once after each numeral (me'at and shemonim), rather than being pluralized once for the combined total.
• shemonim ("eighty", H8084) — masculine plural cardinal number, coordinated to the first numeral by the conjunction u- ("and", H9002).

What the text says

The Hebrew clause is built on the construct phrase yemei Yitzchaq ("days of Isaac"), the grammatical subject of the plural verb va-yihyu ("and they were"). This is the standard biblical idiom for stating a lifespan: rather than saying "Isaac was X years old," the text says "the days of Isaac were X years," making "days" (yemei, H3117G) the formal subject and "Isaac" the possessor in a construct relationship.

The number itself is expressed by two separate construct/coordinate numeral phrases rather than a single combined numeral: me'at shanah ("hundred of year") for 100, joined by the conjunction u- ("and") to shemonim shanah ("eighty year[s]") for 80. Each numeral element governs its own occurrence of the noun shanah ("year", H8141), so the noun for "year" appears twice in the Hebrew — once bound to "hundred" and once to "eighty" — a pattern typical of Biblical Hebrew numeral syntax, where large compound numbers are often built by repeating the counted noun with each numeral component rather than stating it once for the whole sum.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb va-yihyu ("and they were," plural, agreeing with "days") is rendered in the LXX with egenonto ("they came to be/were"), preserving the plural subject "the days." The Vulgate uses completi sunt ("were completed/fulfilled"), a phrase that adds the notion of completion not explicit in the Hebrew verb "to be." Modern renderings such as BSB ("Isaac lived 180 years") and SBLIBRE ("Isaac vivió ciento ochenta años") shift the grammatical subject from "the days of Isaac" to "Isaac" himself as the one who "lived," diverging from the Hebrew's construct-noun subject structure.