Genesis 48:3

Summary

Jacob tells Joseph that El Shaddai ("God Almighty", H0410G/H7706) appeared to him at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed him there. The verse reports direct speech introducing a past divine encounter as the basis for what Jacob will say next.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal narrative form with the narrative vav, marking the next event in the story sequence: "and then he said."
• El Shaddai ("God Almighty", H0410G construct + H7706) — El is in construct form, literally "God of," combined with Shaddai as a title; together they function as a fixed divine designation.
• nir'ah ("he appeared", H7200G) — niphal perfect: the niphal stem gives a passive/reflexive nuance ("he made himself seen" or "he was seen"), and the perfect aspect marks the appearance as a completed past event.
• be-Luz ("at Luz", H3870H) and be-'eretz Kena'an ("in the land of Canaan", H0776G construct + H3667A) — two prepositional phrases with be- ("in/at"), the second built on a construct noun 'eretz ("land of"), together locating the event geographically.
• va-yevarekh ("and he blessed", H1288) — piel narrative form; the piel stem intensifies the verbal action ("bless" as a full, effective act), continuing the narrative chain begun by va-yomer.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative chain typical of Biblical Hebrew: va-yomer ("and he said") sets Jacob as speaker addressing Joseph via the preposition 'el ("to", H0413). What follows is Jacob's direct speech, introduced without any explicit quotation marker in Hebrew — the shift to first person ("appeared to me," "blessed me") signals the change from narration to quoted speech. The divine subject is named as El Shaddai, using the construct form of El ("God of") fused with the title Shaddai ("Almighty"), a fixed combination rather than a descriptive phrase built word-by-word.

The verb nir'ah ("he appeared") is niphal perfect, giving the sense of a completed event with the subject in a passive or reflexive relation to the seeing — the deity is the one "seen" rather than the explicit agent of seeing. Location is given through two stacked construct/prepositional phrases: be-Luz ("at Luz") and be-'eretz Kena'an ("in the land of Canaan"), the second clarifying the first. The final clause, va-yevarekh 'oti ("and he blessed me"), uses the piel stem of barakh, continuing the narrative vav pattern, with 'oti marking Jacob as the direct object receiving the blessing, using the direct object marker 'et (H0853) plus first-person suffix.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders El Shaddai as ho theos mou ("my God"), omitting the title "Almighty" (Shaddai) present in the Hebrew and instead adding a possessive "my." The Vulgate renders it as Deus omnipotens ("God Almighty"), which corresponds more closely to the Hebrew title Shaddai.