Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 45:26
Jacob's heart fainted. A rare verb some read as his heart simply stopped, not merely swooned.
Genesis 45:26, in every translation this tool compares.
English fainted suggests a brief swoon, someone who recovers in a moment. If the stronger reading of the rare Hebrew verb is right, the sentence is closer to his heart stopped, a far more severe, almost fatal reaction to shocking news, before Jacob's spirit revives in the very next verse.
Because the verb describing Jacob's reaction to the news that Joseph is alive is a rare word some scholars read as far stronger than the mild fainted most versions print, closer to his heart simply stopped, a genuinely different picture of the moment's shock.
Most versions read fainted, was stunned, or did not believe them, softer options for a word whose exact force is genuinely unclear given how rarely it occurs.
וַיָּפָג vayafag (פּוּג pug) · H6313
Vayafag, from the rare root pug, appears seldom enough in the Hebrew Bible that its precise force is debated; at Lamentations 2:18 the same root clearly means cease or stop, which has led some readers, including the medieval commentator Ibn Ezra, to render this verse in stronger terms than a simple faint, and Robert Alter's translation renders it 'his heart went numb' rather than the milder, more traditional fainted.
English fainted names a brief, recoverable swoon; if pug's stronger sense of ceasing or stopping is correct here, the verse is describing something closer to a genuine, momentary cardiac event, a considerably more severe reaction that softer English translations do not convey.
When a rare verb's few other occurrences point toward a stronger sense than the traditional English gloss suggests, weigh the stronger reading seriously rather than defaulting to whichever translation sounds most familiar. Familiarity is not evidence.
Fainted or was stunned keeps the traditional, milder reading and fits smoothly with Jacob's quick recovery the following verse. His heart stopped, following the word's clearer sense at Lamentations 2:18, reads the shock as considerably more severe, a nearly fatal jolt rather than a brief swoon.
- pug clearly meaning cease/stop at Lamentations 2:18
- Ibn Ezra's reading of this verse in light of that parallel
- Robert Alter's translation, 'his heart went numb'
