Genesis 48:18

Summary

Joseph speaks to his father Jacob, objecting to the way Jacob has crossed his hands in blessing, and specifies that the one Jacob's left hand rests on is ha-bekhor ("the firstborn", H1060). He then instructs Jacob to place his right hand on that son's head instead.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking this as the next event in the sequence of the story.
• lo-khen ("not thus", H3808 + H3651C) — negation joined to the adverb "thus," forming a fixed objection formula: "not so."
• aviy ("my father", H0001G + H9020) — construct noun with 1st person suffix, a vocative address embedded in direct speech.
• ha-bekhor ("the firstborn", H9009 + H1060) — noun with definite article, marking a specific, identified status rather than a general category.
• sim ("put", H7760H) — qal imperative, a direct command form addressed to "you" (masculine singular), i.e., Jacob.

What the text says

The verse is built as a short reported speech introduced by va-yomer... el-aviv ("and he said... to his father"), the standard narrative formula for direct discourse. Within the speech, Joseph first utters the short exclamation lo-khen aviy ("not thus, my father"), where khen ("thus", H3651C) refers back to the manner in which Jacob had positioned his hands in the preceding verses — the negation lo (H3808) rejects that specific configuration rather than the blessing itself.

The causal clause ki-zeh ha-bekhor ("for this is the firstborn") uses the particle ki (H3588A), which can function as "for/because" or "that," to justify Joseph's objection: the demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088) points to a specific son, and ha-bekhor carries the definite article, identifying him as the firstborn, not merely "a firstborn." This grammatical definiteness underlines that Joseph treats firstborn status as a known, singular fact about one particular son.

The final clause is an imperative command, sim yeminekha al-rosho ("put your right hand on his head"), where yeminekha ("your right hand", H3225G + H9021) is a construct noun with a possessive suffix specifying whose right hand, and rosho ("his head", H7218A + H9023) likewise carries a suffix indicating whose head is meant — grammatically anchoring the instruction to specific individuals already established in the narrative context.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew sim yeminekha ("put your right hand") is rendered in the LXX as epithes tēn dexian ("place the right [hand]"), without an explicit possessive pronoun equivalent to "your," though the sense is supplied by context. The Vulgate's pone dexteram tuam ("put your right hand") matches the Hebrew possessive more closely with tuam ("your"). The Spanish RV1909 and SBLIBRE both render yeminekha as "tu diestra" / "tu mano derecha," explicitly preserving the possessive suffix present in the Hebrew.