Genesis 41:6

Summary

The verse describes the appearance of seven additional ears of grain in Pharaoh's dream, which grow up after the first seven. These new ears are characterized as thin and damaged by an east wind.

Key words

• hinneh ("there!", H2009) — an interjection that draws attention to what appears in the dream, marking a new element in the vision.
• shibbolim ("ears of grain", H7641B) — masculine plural noun, the same term used for the first set of ears earlier in the dream narrative.
• shedufot ("scorched of", H7710) — qal passive participle, feminine plural construct form, meaning the ears are in the state of having been scorched; the construct form links it directly to qadim ("east wind", H6921).
• tzome'chot ("springing up", H6779) — qal active participle, feminine plural, describing the ongoing action of growth, in agreement with the feminine plural shibbolim.
• 'acharei-hen ("after them", H0310A + H9039) — a construct plus pronominal suffix indicating temporal sequence relative to the first seven ears mentioned in the preceding verse.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the interjection hinneh ("there!", H2009), which in dream-report style signals a new visual element appearing to the dreamer. The subject is sheva shibbolim ("seven ears of grain", H7651 + H7641B), described by two coordinated feminine plural adjectival/participial forms: daqqot ("thin", H1851) and shedufot qadim ("scorched of an east wind", H7710 + H6921). The second descriptor uses a construct chain — the passive participle shedufot governs the noun qadim, literally "scorched-ones of east-wind," indicating the agent or cause of the scorching without a separate preposition.

The main verb of the clause is the participle tzome'chot ("springing up", H6779), which describes the ears as being in the process of growing rather than using a finite past-tense verb. This participial construction is common in Hebrew narrative description of visionary or ongoing scenes. The phrase concludes with 'acharei-hen ("after them", H0310A + H9039), a temporal construct phrase with a third-person feminine plural suffix referring back to the seven good ears described in the previous verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shedufot qadim ("scorched of an east wind", H7710 + H6921) as anemophoroi ("wind-blasted"), a general term for wind damage without specifying "east." The Vulgate similarly uses percussae uredine ("struck by blight/mildew"), shifting the cause from wind specifically to a blight-like condition, differing from the Hebrew's explicit reference to the qadim ("east wind", H6921).