Genesis 27:33 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Genesis 27:33
And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
where
אֵפ֡וֹא'e.Fo'
H645
strictly a demonstrative particle · interjection
taken
הַצָּֽדha.tzad-
H6679
to lie alongside (i.e. in wait) · definite article + verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
venison
צַיִד֩tza.Yid
H6718
the chase · noun, common masculine singular absolute
brought
וַיָּ֨בֵאvai.Ya.ve'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
eaten
וָאֹכַ֥לva.'o.Khal
H398
to eat (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular
camest
תָּב֖וֹאta.Vo'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular
blessed
וָאֲבָרֲכֵ֑הוּva.'a.va.ra.Khe.hu
H1288
to kneel · conjunction + verb, piel sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
blessed
בָּר֖וּךְba.Rukh
H1288
to kneel · verb, qal passive participle, masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 28:3-4 And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people;
Job 21:6 Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh.
Romans 11:29 For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
Job 37:1 At this also my heart trembleth, and is moved out of his place.
Psalms 55:5 Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.
John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more a…
John 10:28-29 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 27:30-40
Here is, I. The covenant-blessing denied to Esau. He that made so light of the birthright would now have inherited the blessing, but he was rejected, and found no place of repentance in his father, though he sought it carefully with tears, Heb 12:17. Observe, 1. How carefully he sought it. He prepared the savoury meat, as his father had directed him, and then begged the blessing which his father had encouraged him to expect, Gen 27:31. When he understood that Jacob had obtained it surreptitiously, he cried with a great and exceedingly bitter cry, Gen 27:34. No man could have laid the disappointment more to heart than he did; he made his father's tent to ring with his grief, and again (Gen 27…
Esau came in from his hunting--Scarcely had the former scene been concluded, when the fraud was discovered. The emotions of Isaac, as well as Esau, may easily be imagined--the astonishment, alarm, and sorrow of the one; the disappointment and indignation of the other. But a moment's reflection convinced the aged patriarch that the transfer of the blessing was "of the Lord," and now irrevocable. The importunities of Esau, however, overpowered him; and as the prophetic afflatus was upon the patriarch, he added what was probably as pleasing to a man of Esau's character as the other would have been.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 27:33
And Isaac trembled - The marginal reading is very literal and proper, And Isaac trembled with a great trembling greatly. And this shows the deep concern he felt for his own deception, and the iniquity of the means by which it had been brought about. Though Isaac must have heard of that which God had spoken to Rebekah, The elder shall serve the younger, and could never have wished to reverse this Divine purpose; yet he might certainly think that the spiritual blessing might be conveyed to Esau, and by him to all the nations of the earth, notwithstanding the superiority of secular dominion on the other side.
Yea, and he shall be blessed - From what is said in this verse, collated with Heb 12:1…
What had actually occurred from the action of Jacob was a mystery of the [divine] economy in view of the Christ prefigured [by Jacob], [of the Christ] who, blessed by the Father, has been blessed forever after his [temporal] birth.The words of Scripture, "Besides himself, Isaac was seized with great amazement," have the same meaning as "Isaac was filled with admiration" for what had happened, because he foresaw that the Gentiles, according to the will of God, had to be blessed and take part in the covenant of the promise made to the fathers through the younger son. That is why Jacob, when he was brought forth and emerged the last from his mother's womb, took hold on Esau's heel. This means that by closely following the footsteps of the prophets the last peoples had to take hold of the right of primogeniture, since they are the first ones to be found in the New Testament.
THE ECSTASY OF ISAAC. — Where the Latin codices say: expavit autem Isaac pavore magno valde (but Isaac began to tremble with a great fear), the Greek codices say: ἐξέστη δὲ Ισαακ ἔκστασιν μεγάλην σφόδρα (Isaac was cast into a very great ecstasy). In this text it is understood, therefore, a commotion so great that would produce a kind of mental alienation. This alienation is properly called ecstasy. And since ecstasy usually occurs in the revelations of very important things, we must understand that in this revelation a spiritual admonition was given to confirm the blessing that Isaac had to give to his youngest son, against whom he should rather have been angry, since he deceived him. The same case occurs when, concerning Adam, the great mystery of which the Apostle speaks is prophesied with these words: And the two will be one flesh, a mystery that is realized between Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31-32.). There it is affirmed that this fact preceded an ecstasy (Cf. Gen 2:21). [
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Father — A name applied (1) to any ancestor (Deut. 1:11; 1 Kings 15:11; Matt. 3:9; 23:30, etc.); and (2) as a title of respect to a chief, ruler, or elder, etc. (Judg. 17:10; 18:19; 1 Sam. 10:12; 2 Kings…
Jacob — One who follows on another’s heels; supplanter, (Gen. 25:26; 27:36; Hos. 12:2-4), the second born of the twin sons of Isaac by Rebekah. He was born probably at Lahai-roi, when his father was…
Judas Iscariot — (Judas of Kerioth). He is sometimes called “the son of Simon,” (John 6:71; 13:2,26) but more commonly ISCARIOTES. (Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:19; Luke 6:16) etc. The name Iscariot has received many…
Hunting · By Esau — By Esau
Isaac · .His old age, last blessing upon his — .His old age, last blessing upon his
Parents · . — .
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
John Gill on Genesis 27:33
And Isaac trembled very exceedingly,.... Or "trembled with a great trembling exceedingly" (b); he was amazed, and astonished, and seized with a trembling all over his body, and with terror and confusion of mind; at the craft of Jacob in getting the blessing; at the disappointment of Esau in losing it; at his own act in blessing Jacob instead of Esau, contrary to his inclination and intention; and at the overruling providence of God in bringing this about in so strange a manner, agreeably to the oracle he had given Rebekah; which now perhaps came fresh into the mind of Isaac, if he had heard it before; and all together threw him into this amazement:
and he said, who? where is he; which words…
And Isaac trembled very exceedingly [48] Here now again the faith which had been smothered in the breast of the holy man shines forth and emits fresh sparks; for there is no doubt that his fear springs from faith. Besides, it is no common fear which Moses describes, but that which utterly confounds the holy man: for, whereas he was perfectly conscious of his own vocation, and therefore was persuaded that the duty of naming the heir with whom he should deposit the covenant of eternal life was divinely enjoined upon him, he no sooner discovered his error than he was filled with fear, that in an affair so great and so serious God had suffered him to err; for unless he had thought that God was t…
Jacob had hardly left his father, after receiving the blessing (יצא אך, was only gone out), when Esau returned and came to Isaac, with the game prepared, to receive the blessing. The shock was inconceivable which Isaac received, when he found that he had blessed another, and not Esau-that, in fact, he had blessed Jacob. At the same time he neither could nor would, either curse him on account of the deception which he had practised, or withdraw the blessing imparted. For he could not help confessing to himself that he had sinned and brought the deception upon himself by his carnal preference for Esau. Moreover, the blessing was not a matter of subjective human affection, but a right entrusted…
When he realized what had happened, Isaac began to tremble uncontrollably; he had been tampering with God’s plan, and God had overruled him.
Rashi on Genesis 27:33
ויחרד [AND ISAAC] TREMBLED — Explain it as the Targum renders it ותוה, which means he was perplexed. The Midrashic explanation (Midrash Tanchuma, Toldot 11) is that he saw Gehinnom opening beneath him (Esau).
מי אפוא WHO THEN IS HE — The word אפוא is an independent particle having no etymological connection with any other Hebrew word and is used with many different shades of meaning Another explanation of אפוא is that it is the same as איה פה where here, — so that מי אפוא means “Who is he and where is he here that hath hunted venison”?)
ואכל מכל AND I HAVE EATEN OF ALL — all tastes that I desired to find in it I indeed found therein (Genesis Rabbah 67:2).
גם ברוך יהיה YEA, AND HE SHALL BE…
