Genesis 46:7
בָּנָיו וּבְנֵי בָנָיו אִתּוֹ בְּנֹתָיו וּבְנוֹת בָּנָיו וְכָל־זַרְעוֹ הֵבִיא אִתּוֹ מִצְרָֽיְמָה׃ ס
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
בָּנָ֞יו וּבְנֵ֤י בָנָיו֙ אִתּ֔וֹ בְּנֹתָ֛יו וּבְנ֥וֹת בָּנָ֖יו וְכָל־זַרְע֑וֹ הֵבִ֥יא אִתּ֖וֹ מִצְרָֽיְמָה׃ ס
υἱοὶ καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ τῶν υἱῶν αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτοῦ, θυγατέρες καὶ θυγατέρες τῶν υἱῶν αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτοῦ. καὶ πᾶν τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἤγαγεν εἰς Αἴγυπτον.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
filii ejus, et nepotes, filiæ, et cuncta simul progenies.
Jacob se llevó a Egipto a sus hijos y a sus nietos, a sus hijas y a sus nietas; es decir, a toda su descendencia.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Sus hijos, y los hijos de sus hijos consigo; sus hijas, y las hijas de sus hijos, y á toda su simiente trajo consigo á Egipto.
Jacob took with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons, and his daughters and granddaughters — all his offspring. The Children of Leah
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse lists the descendants Jacob brought with him into Egypt: his sons, his grandsons (literally "sons of his sons"), his daughters, his granddaughters ("daughters of his sons"), and "all his offspring." The clause closes with the verb hevi ("he brought", H0935P) and the destination Mitzrayemah ("to Egypt", H4714G).
Key words
- banav ("sons", H1121A) — masculine plural construct with 3ms suffix ("his sons"); construct form links the noun to the implied possessor Jacob.
- bnei vanav ("sons of his sons", H1121A) — a double construct chain (noun + noun + suffix) used because Biblical Hebrew has no single lexeme for "grandson"; the relationship is expressed by stacking construct nouns.
- bnotav ("his daughters", H1323G) — feminine plural construct with suffix, parallel in structure to banav.
- khol zaro ("all his offspring", H2233H) — singular construct noun zera ("seed/offspring") governed by khol ("all", H3605); a collective singular summarizing the preceding plural lists.
- hevi ("he brought", H0935P) — Hiphil perfect of the root behind "to come/go" (H0935), giving the causative sense "caused to come" = "brought"; the subject (Jacob) is not restated but carried from the preceding verse.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of coordinated noun phrases — sons, grandsons, daughters, granddaughters, and "all his offspring" — followed at the end by the single finite verb hevi and the directional form Mitzrayemah ("to Egypt", H4714G with directional he, H9011). Grammatically, the whole list of persons functions as the object of hevi; the verb governs everything that precedes it, so the long enumeration reads as one unit: "[all these] he brought... to Egypt." The construct chains bnei vanav and bnot banav show how Hebrew expresses "grandsons" and "granddaughters" without dedicated vocabulary, relying instead on the construct relationship "sons of his sons" / "daughters of his sons." The final phrase khol zaro ("all his seed", H2233H) functions as a summarizing appositive, collapsing the itemized list into one collective noun.
Differences between versions
The LXX mirrors the Hebrew construct chains literally: "the sons of the sons" (υἱοὶ τῶν υἱῶν) for bnei vanav, preserving the double-genitive structure. The Vulgate instead compresses this into a single Latin term, nepotes ("grandsons"), where the Hebrew uses two stacked construct nouns; the Vulgate also omits repeating "daughters" separately for granddaughters, merging the female descendants into cuncta simul progenies ("all the offspring together"), a stronger condensation than either the Hebrew or the LXX.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.