Genesis 49:9

Summary

The verse compares Judah to a young lion returning from prey, using an image of a powerful animal crouching and lying down that no one dares to disturb. The syntax includes a direct address to "my son" inserted into the description, and closes with a rhetorical question about who would rouse such an animal.

Key words

• gur ("cub of", H1482) — construct noun opening the line, linking directly to 'aryeh to form the phrase "cub of a lion."
• teref ("prey", H2964) — governed by the preposition mi ("from", H9006), describing the source or direction of the movement in 'aliyta.
• 'aliyta ("you have gone up", H5927G) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine singular, marking a completed action addressed directly to "you" (Judah/the son).
• kara' ("he bows down", H3766) and ravatz ("he lies down", H7257) — both qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular, shifting the description from direct address back to third-person narration about the lion figure.
• yeqimenu ("will he rouse him", H6965B) — hiphil (causative) imperfect with 3rd person suffix nu ("him", H9033), following the interrogative mi ("who?", H4310), forming a causative rhetorical question: "who will cause him to rise?"

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a construct chain, gur 'aryeh yehudah ("cub of a lion, Judah"), identifying Judah with the young lion image before any verb appears. The clause mitteref beni 'aliyta ("from prey, my son, you have gone up") inserts the vocative beni ("my son", H1121A + H9020) between the prepositional phrase and the verb 'aliyta, interrupting the flow of the lion imagery with direct address — a construction that keeps the animal metaphor and the personal address woven together rather than separated into distinct clauses.

A grammatical shift occurs at kara' ravatz: after the 2nd-person verb 'aliyta, the text moves to two 3rd-person perfect verbs describing the lion's posture — "he bows down, he lies down" — without an explicit subject noun, the subject being understood from the preceding lion imagery. The closing line uses two comparative phrases, ke'aryeh ("like a lion", H0738B) and ukhlavi ("and like a lion/lioness", H3833C), pairing two different Hebrew terms for lion in synonymous parallelism, followed by the interrogative-hiphil construction mi yeqimenu, which frames the final statement as a rhetorical question rather than a flat assertion.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew mitteref ("from prey") is rendered in the LXX as ek blastou ("from a shoot/sprout"), a different noun than "prey," while the Vulgate has ad praedam ("to the prey"), reversing the directional sense of the Hebrew preposition mi ("from"). Additionally, where the Hebrew shifts to 3rd-person verbs kara' and ravatz ("he bows down, he lies down"), both the LXX (anapesōn ekoimēthēs, "having reclined, you slept") and the Vulgate (requiescens accubuisti, "resting, you lay down") retain 2nd-person forms, continuing the direct address that the Hebrew text discontinues at this point.