Genesis 49:12

Summary

The verse describes eyes darkened by wine and teeth whitened by milk, using two parallel comparative constructions built entirely on construct-state adjectives paired with prepositions of comparison. No verb appears; the sentence is nominal, built purely through juxtaposition and comparison.

Key words

• chakhliLi ("dark of", H2447) — masculine singular adjective in construct form, meaning it must attach to the following noun ("dark of eyes"); construct adjectives like this function almost like compound descriptors rather than independent predicates.
• 'einayim ("eyes", H5869A) — feminine dual noun, referring to a natural pair; the dual form itself, rather than a numeral, signals "two eyes."
• mi- ("more than", H9006) — comparative preposition attached to yayin, creating the structure "dark-of-eyes more-than wine," i.e., a comparison rather than a simple description.
• leven- ("white of", H3836) — construct adjective parallel to chakhliLi, forming the matching half of the poetic couplet.
• shinnayim ("teeth", H8127G) — feminine dual noun, again marking a natural anatomical pair without needing a separate word for "two."

What the text says

The Hebrew has no verb: it consists of two balanced noun-phrases, each built from a construct adjective + dual noun + comparative preposition + reference noun. The first half, chakhliLi 'einayim mi-yayin, literally reads "dark-of eyes more-than wine," and the second, u-leven-shinnayim me-chalav, "and white-of teeth more-than milk." The construct chain (chakhliLi + 'einayim, leven + shinnayim) binds adjective and body part into a single descriptive unit, while the prepositions mi- and me- (both forms of H9006) establish that the comparison is one of degree — the eyes/teeth exceed wine/milk in their respective qualities. The absence of a copula ("to be") is typical of Hebrew poetic parallelism: the two clauses mirror each other in structure (construct-adjective + dual-noun + comparative-preposition + liquid-noun), reinforcing the couplet through grammatical symmetry rather than through verbal repetition.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew adjective chakhliLi (H2447) denotes darkness or a dusky/reddish hue, without specifying "beautiful." The LXX renders this as charopoioi ("bright/gladdening," associated with a joyful appearance) applied to "his eyes," differing in nuance from the Hebrew's darkness. The Vulgate shifts further, using pulchriores ("more beautiful") rather than any term for color, describing the eyes as more beautiful than wine. The Hebrew's comparative structure (darker/whiter than) is preserved in the LXX’s hyper and the Vulgate’s ablative-comparative construction, but the specific quality being compared (color/darkness vs. beauty/brightness) differs between the Hebrew and the two ancient translations.