Genesis 41:20

Summary

Genesis 41:20 narrates the second half of Pharaoh's dream: the thin and ugly cows devour the seven first, fat cows. The verse uses a chain of feminine plural adjectives with repeated definite articles to describe both sets of cows, and marks the eaten cows with the direct object marker.

Key words

• va.toKhalnah ("they ate", H0398) — qal verb, feminine plural, prefixed with the narrative vav; continues the sequence of the dream's events and agrees with the feminine plural subject ha-parot ("the cows").
• ra.Kot ("thin", H7534) — feminine plural adjective with its own definite article, syntactically bound to ha-parot to describe the eating cows.
• ra.'ot ("displeasing/ugly", H7451A) — second adjective, also carrying the definite article, joined to the first adjective by ve ("and", H9002), forming a double qualifier for the same subject.
• 'et (H0853) — direct object marker; signals that what follows (shéva ha-parot...) is the object being consumed, not another subject.
• ri.sho.Not ("former", H7223G) — ordinal adjective, feminine plural, distinguishing this group of cows as the ones that appeared first in the dream, as opposed to the thin ones that appeared second.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative va ("and", H9001) attached to toKhalnah ("they ate", H0398), continuing the dream sequence. The subject is ha-parot ha-raqqot ve-ha-ra'ot — "the cows, the thin ones, and the displeasing ones" — where each adjective (raqqot, H7534; ra'ot, H7451A) receives its own definite article, matching the article already on ha-parot ("the cows", H6510). This repetition of the article across noun and adjectives is a standard feature of Biblical Hebrew attributive syntax: the noun is definite once, and each adjective describing it independently repeats the article rather than relying on proximity alone.

The object of the eating is introduced by 'et (H0853), the direct object marker, followed by shéva ha-parot ha-rishonot ha-beri'ot — "seven, the cows, the former ones, the fat ones." Here rishonot (H7223G) is an ordinal form meaning "former" or "first," distinguishing this group temporally from the thin cows just mentioned, rather than by physical order. The adjective beri'ot ("fat", H1277) closes the noun phrase, again with its own article, forming a fourth attributive layer describing the same set of cows.

Differences between versions

The LXX places the numeral "seven" (ἑπτὰ) on the subject cows (the thin, ugly ones) as well as on the object cows, whereas the Hebrew text only attaches sheva ("seven", H7651) to the rishonot ("former") cows being eaten, not to the eating cows. The LXX also adds ἐκλεκτάς ("select/choice"), an additional qualifier for the fat cows not present as a separate lexical item in this Hebrew clause. The Vulgate excerpt given is highly compressed, rendering the adjectival descriptions of both groups of cows as a single relative clause ("quae, devoratis et consumptis prioribus") without reproducing the paired thin/ugly and former/fat adjective sets found in the Hebrew.