Genesis 49:26

Summary

The verse states that the blessings given to the addressee by "your father" surpass ("have prevailed over," gavru, H1396) the blessings of "those who conceived me" (horai, H2029), extending to the desire of the eternal hills. It closes with a wish that these blessings rest on the head of Joseph and on the head of the nezir ("prince/consecrated one," H5139) among his brothers.

Key words

• birkot ("blessings of", H1293) — feminine plural construct, appearing twice (positions 1 and 6), linking "blessings" grammatically to two different possessors within the same clause.
• horai ("those who conceived me", H2029) — qal participle, masculine plural construct with a 1st-person suffix; a participial form describing the agents of an action ("the ones who bore/conceived"), not a simple noun like "father" or "parents."
• ta'avat ("desire of", H8379) — feminine singular construct, forming a chain with giv'ot ("hills of", H1389I) and olam ("antiquity/eternity", H5769G), producing the phrase "desire of the hills of antiquity."
• tihyeina ("may they be", H1961) — qal imperfect, 3rd person feminine plural, agreeing with the feminine plural birkot ("blessings") as its subject; the imperfect aspect allows a future or optative/jussive reading ("let them be" / "they will be").
• nezir ("prince of", H5139) — masculine singular construct, governing echav ("his brothers", H0251G + suffix); the construct form ties this term directly to "brothers," producing "the nezir of his brothers."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a chain of construct phrases (birkot..., ta'avat giv'ot olam) that stack nouns dependent on one another, a common feature of Hebrew poetic parallelism. The verb gavru (H1396, qal perfect, "they prevailed") takes "blessings of your father" as subject and "blessings of horai" as the object of comparison via the preposition 'al ("over," H5921A). The participle horai (H2029) does not name "father" again but describes those who performed the act of conceiving/bearing, a form distinct from the noun av ("father," H0001G) used in line 1.

The second half shifts to the imperfect verb tihyeina (H1961), which can carry a future or wish-like nuance ("may they be" / "they will be"), governing the destination of the blessings: "the head of Joseph" and "the qodqod (scalp) of the nezir of his brothers." The term nezir (H5139) is a construct noun meaning "one set apart" or "prince," grammatically bound to "his brothers," so the phrase reads structurally as "the consecrated-one/prince of his brothers," not as a personal name.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the participle horai ("those who conceived me") as "πατρός σου καὶ μητρός σου" ("your father and your mother"), introducing an explicit reference to "mother" absent from the Hebrew construct form. The LXX also expands "desire of hills of antiquity" into two parallel phrases about "enduring mountains" and "everlasting hills," diverging from the single construct chain in the Hebrew. The Vulgate translates horai as "patrum ejus" ("his fathers"), a plural noun rather than a participial description. Most notably, for nezir (H5139), the Vulgate transliterates the term as the proper name "Nazaraei," while the Hebrew form is a construct noun ("prince/consecrated one of his brothers") rather than a personal or ethnic designation; the LXX instead uses the verb ἡγήσατο ("he led/ruled"), a further distinct rendering of the same term.