בָּר֧וּךְ פְּרִֽי־בִטְנְךָ֛ וּפְרִ֥י אַדְמָתְךָ֖ וּפְרִ֣י בְהֶמְתֶּ֑ךָ שְׁגַ֥ר אֲלָפֶ֖יךָ וְעַשְׁתְּר֥וֹת צֹאנֶֽךָ׃

Blessed shall be your issue from the womb, your produce from the soil, and the offspring of your cattle, the calving of your herd and the lambing of your flock.

(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation—an adaptation of the NJPS translation.)


Contrary to the claims of some interpreters, the gender-role question as to whether an Israelite husband controls his wife’s womb is simply not in play in this biblical passage. See further my comment on 7:13.


As for the translation, the NJPS “the issue from your womb” is not defensible (despite its being conventional in English translations, going back hundreds of years). It is overly literal for a “thought-for-thought” type of translation like this one. The revised rendering reassigns the possessive pronoun so that it modifies “issue” rather than “womb,” not only to correct NJPS on its own terms, but also to avoid a gender misreading. And for consistency, it likewise reassigns the same pronoun in the other genitive phrases in this verse.