Genesis 41:23

Summary

The verse describes seven additional ears of grain appearing after the first seven, characterized by three qualities of deterioration — withered, thin, and scorched by the east wind — and specifies that they sprouted after (i.e., following, in the vision's sequence) the healthy ears.

Key words

• hinneh ("there!", H2009) — an interjection marking a sudden visual focus within the narrated dream, drawing attention to what appears next.
• shibbolim ("ears of grain", H7641B) — masculine plural noun, the grammatical subject being described by the following participles and adjective.
• tzenumot ("withered", H6798) — qal participle, feminine plural, agreeing with shibbolim; describes an ongoing state of the ears rather than a completed action.
• shedufot ("scorched of", H7710) — qal passive participle, feminine plural, in construct form, meaning it must attach to the following noun to form "scorched by X."
• qadim ("an east wind", H6921) — masculine singular noun that completes the construct chain begun by shedufot, naming the specific agent of the scorching.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence stacks four descriptive terms after the noun shibbolim ("ears of grain"): tzenumot ("withered"), dakkot ("thin"), and the construct pair shedufot qadim ("scorched of an east wind"). The first two are independent participle/adjective forms agreeing in gender and number with shibbolim, while shedufot is grammatically bound to qadim — it cannot stand alone but requires the following noun to complete its meaning, producing the sense "scorched-by east-wind." This construct linkage is a feature the English or Spanish glosses render as a full phrase ("scorched by the east wind"), but in Hebrew it is a single tight grammatical unit.

The final word, tzomechot ("springing up", H6779), is another qal participle agreeing with shibbolim, describing the ongoing action of sprouting. It is followed by achareihem ("after them", H0310A + H9038), a construct-form temporal expression with a pronominal suffix, indicating that this second growth follows the first set of ears mentioned earlier in the passage.

Differences between versions

The LXX collapses the Hebrew's three descriptive terms (tzenumot, dakkot, shedufot qadim) into two: λεπτοὶ ("thin") and ἀνεμόφθοροι ("wind-blasted"), merging "withered" and "scorched by east wind" into a single compound adjective rather than keeping them distinct. The Vulgate similarly reduces the description to two elements, "tenues et percussae uredine" ("thin and struck by blight"), rendering the cause of damage as uredine ("blight" or "mildew") rather than specifying an east wind as the Hebrew qadim does.