Genesis 47:10

Summary

Jacob blesses Pharaoh, and afterward Jacob leaves Pharaoh's presence. The verse closes the audience scene between Jacob and Pharaoh with two sequential narrative actions.

Key words

• y.Va.rekh ("he blessed", H1288) — piel stem, giving the verb an intensive nuance beyond a simple active blessing; narrative form marks it as the next event in the sequence.
• ya.'a.Ko ("Jacob", H3290) — proper name, grammatical subject of the blessing.
• 'et- ("", H0853) — direct object marker, signaling that par.'Oh is the recipient of the blessing, not its subject.
• i.ye.Tze' ("he went out", H3318) — qal stem, simple narrative action, marking Jacob as the one who departs.
• f.Nei ("before / face of", H6440) — construct plural noun, forming the idiom "from before the face of," i.e., from the presence of someone.

What the text says

The verse contains two clauses joined by the narrative vav (va, H9001), each opening with a verb in the narrative (vayyiqtol) form: y.Va.rekh ("he blessed") and i.ye.Tze' ("he went out"). This construction presents the two actions as sequential: first the blessing, then the departure. In both clauses Jacob is the grammatical subject, though the subject noun ya.'a.Ko appears explicitly only with the first verb; the second verb carries the subject implicitly through its third-person masculine singular form.

The object of the blessing, par.'Oh ("Pharaoh"), is marked by the direct object particle 'et-, making clear that Pharaoh receives the blessing rather than performs it. The phrase describing Jacob's exit uses a compound preposition, mi ("from", H9006) + li ("to", H9005) + f.Nei ("face of", H6440, construct plural) + par.'Oh, literally "from to the face(s) of Pharaoh." This idiom, built on the construct noun f.Nei, denotes departure from someone's presence rather than a purely physical exit through a location. Pharaoh's name appears twice in the verse, once as the object of the blessing and once as the person whose presence Jacob leaves, reinforcing the symmetry between the two clauses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence with a participial construction (εὐλογήσος, "having blessed") followed by ἐξῆλθεν ("he went out"), and replaces the repeated name "Pharaoh" with the pronoun αὐτοῦ ("him") in the second clause, where the Hebrew repeats par.'Oh explicitly. The Vulgate condenses further: "Et benedicto rege, egressus est foras" ("And the king having been blessed, he went out"), using an ablative absolute construction and translating par.'Oh as "rege" ("king") rather than transliterating the name, and omitting any equivalent to "before the face of."