Genesis 37

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 98

   אֵלֶּה תֹּלְדוֹת יַעֲקֹב is the last of the headings of Genesis (2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9), and the home gloss "producings" is held through the chain. What follows is not a list of sons but the story of one son and his brothers, which runs to the end of the book. So "producings" names what came of Jacob, as 2:4 names what came of the skies and the land. The WPRB has "family history" (98).

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 6

   רֹעֶה אֶת־אֶחָיו בַּצֹּאן: the particle אֶת is here the preposition "with," and the flock takes בְּ, "among the flock." The same letters can mark a direct object, "shepherding his brothers," and a reader who already knows the dreams of vv. 7 and 9 hears that construction too. The preposition is printed; the next clause has אֶת as "with" again ("a lad with the sons of Bilhah").

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "their evil report" (KJV) / "an ill report of them" (RSV)

   Rulings 3, 25

   דִּבָּה is talk passed on quietly, true or false: the spies "brought out a whispering of the land" (Num 13:32; 14:36–37); "I heard the whispering of many, terror all around" (Jer 20:10; Ps 31:14); "one who sends out whispering is a fool" (Prov 10:18). The root is used of what glides softly over the lips (Song 7:10). "Report" is left for שֵׁמַע. "Their whispering" keeps the suffix open, as the Hebrew does: what they said, or what was said about them. The adjective stands after the noun without the article, "their whispering, bad," and is printed in that place.

4. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "a coat of many colours" (KJV) / "a long robe with sleeves" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 25, 40

   פַּסִּים is found only with כְּתֹנֶת, here (37:3, 23, 32) and in 2 Sam 13:18–19, where Tamar, the king's daughter, wears the same tunic, "for so the king's virgin daughters were clothed," and tears it. Nothing in either passage says what the word means, and the versions guess in different directions. The LXX has χιτῶνα ποικίλον "a varicoloured tunic" and the Vulgate tunicam polymitam "a tunic of many threads," whence the KJV. Aquila has a tunic "to the ankles," and Symmachus one "with sleeves," taking פַּס as the flat of the hand or foot (Aramaic פַּס יְדָא, the palm of the hand that wrote on the wall, Dan 5:5, 24), whence the RSV. Rashi gives "a garment of fine wool," and after the midrash reads the four letters as the four hands that would sell Joseph: Potiphar, the merchants (סֹחֲרִים), the Ishmaelites and the Midianites. Speiser compared an ornamented garment in Akkadian inventories. No sense is recovered, and English cannot hold "colours" and "sleeves" together, so the word is transliterated, as a name for a garment no one has seen. The Latin passim "scattered, here and there" is a homograph with no connection. The tunic is כְּתֹנֶת, the garment of 3:21 and of the priests (Exod 28:4), held as "tunic" through this chapter (2, 37): it is stripped in v. 23, dipped in v. 31 and sent in v. 32. The WPRB "a special robe" decides nothing.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 10, 2

   וְלֹא יָכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹם: the infinitive takes the suffix as its object, "to speak him," that is, to speak to him or with him. לְשָׁלֹם is the greeting's word (29:6; 43:27, "Is your father at peace?"), so they could not wish him peace. Father sends son to "see the peace of your brothers" in v. 14 (שְׁלוֹם twice), and the home gloss "peace" is held so the reader hears it.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 6, 25

   מְאַלְּמִים אֲלֻמִּים: the piel participle with its own noun, a cognate pair kept as "seeding seed" is kept at 1:11. The verb occurs only here; its noun is the sheaf of Ps 126:6, "bringing his sheaves." "Bind" is left for אָסַר (124b). In the dream the sheaves do what the brothers will do in Egypt: they "prostrate themselves" (42:6; 43:26, 28; 44:14), the same verb.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 6, 20

   Each question doubles its verb with the infinitive absolute, as "dying you shall die" (2:17), and the pair is printed with the infinitive first. מָלַךְ "reign" is the king's verb and מָשַׁל "rule" the governor's (1:18; 3:16; 4:7; 45:8, 26, "he is ruler in all the land of Egypt"). The brothers ask it as a sneer, and both come true: Joseph rules (45:8), and the tribe of Judah reigns. הֲ… אִם is a double question, "…? Or …?"; the אִם is not the "if" of an oath.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   Rachel has died at Bethlehem (35:19), and the dream has her bow. Rashi, after b. Berakhot 55a, takes it either as Bilhah, who raised Joseph, or as the proof that no dream is without some nonsense in it. The father rebukes, and also "keeps the word" (v. 11): the LXX has διετήρησεν τὸ ῥῆμα, the words Luke 2:51 uses of Mary.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 79

   In the Leningrad Codex the particle אֶת before צֹאן carries dots over its letters, one of the ten dotted places of the Torah (with 16:5; 18:9; 19:33; 33:4). It is translated as written, and the dots change no sense (79). Rashi, after the midrash: they went "to shepherd themselves," to feed themselves and not their father's flock. Shechem is the city of Gen 34, where the brothers had killed the men, so the father's sending is not a light one.

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Here am I" (KJV) / "Here I am" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 37, 88

    הִנֵּנִי is הִנֵּה with the first-person suffix; the home gloss "look" would print "Look at me," and the construction is declared and printed "Here I am" each time (124i). It is the answer of one who is called and goes: Abraham to Elohim (22:1, 11), Isaac to his father (22:7), Jacob to the messenger (31:11), Moses (Exod 3:4), Samuel (1 Sam 3:4–8), Isaiah (6:8). Here the son answers the father who sends him to his brothers, as Isaac answered Abraham on the way to the mountain, and the chain is held (37).

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "they conspired against him" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 25

    The hithpael of נָכַל is to act with craft and cunning toward someone: "with their wiles (נִכְלֵיהֶם) that they wiled you" (Num 25:18), "to deal craftily (לְהִתְנַכֵּל) with his servants" (Ps 105:25); the participle נוֹכֵל is the cheat (Mal 1:14). "Conspire" gives them an agreement the verb does not state; the verb gives them deceit, which is what they will practise on their father with the tunic (vv. 31–33). "Scheme" is זָמַם's.

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "to slay him" (KJV) / "to kill him" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    לַהֲמִיתוֹ is the hiphil of מוּת "die," the causative "make die." "Kill" is the home gloss of הָרַג (vv. 20, 26), and the KJV and RSV use the one English word for both. The hiphil is printed "make … die" so that the stem stays visible, as the hophal is "be made to die" (126g). In Gen 38 the same stem has Adonai as its subject (38:7, 10).

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 39, 18

    בַּעַל הַחֲלֹמוֹת: "owner of" a thing is the one marked by it, as "owner of hair," a hairy man (2 Kgs 1:8), and "owner of a tongue," a charmer (Eccl 10:11). The KJV and RSV have "this dreamer"; the Hebrew keeps the noun, and the brothers name him by the thing they hate (vv. 5, 8). הַלָּזֶה points away, "that one over there" (24:65), and they say it before he can hear.

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Let us not kill him" (KJV) / "Let us not take his life" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    לֹא נַכֶּנּוּ נָפֶשׁ has the noun as the place of the blow: "he struck him in the soul, and he died" (Deut 19:6, 11); "to strike you in the soul" (Jer 40:14–15). It is a mortal blow, but the words are "strike" and "soul," kept apart from הָרַג "kill" (v. 20) and held as the home glosses; "in the" is supplied. The negative is לֹא, a statement, not the אַל of a prohibition (v. 22), so Reuben says what they will not do.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    "And the pit was empty: there were no waters in it" says one thing twice, and b. Shabbat 22a, followed by Rashi, reads the second clause against the first: no water, but there were snakes and scorpions. A בּוֹר is a cistern cut for rain; dry, it is a prison (40:15, where Joseph calls the dungeon "the pit"; Jer 38:6, Jeremiah in the mire). "Waters" is the plural of the home gloss (6).

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    The Ishmaelites descend from Ishmael, Joseph's great-uncle (25:12–18). אֹרְחָה is a company on the road (אֹרַח "path"): "the caravans of Tema" (Job 6:19), "caravans of Dedanites" (Isa 21:13). The camels are "lifting" the goods, the verb with which the brothers "lifted their eyes" in the same verse; נָשָׂא holds lifting and carrying in one gloss (2).

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "spicery and balm and myrrh" (KJV) / "gum, balm, and myrrh" (RSV)

    Rulings 39, 25

    The three goods recur together among the "choice things of the land" in 43:11. לֹט is the resin of the rockrose, Akkadian ladunu, Greek λήδανον, which Herodotus says the Arabians combed from the beards of goats (3.112); the LXX has στακτή. "Myrrh" is left for מֹר (Exod 30:23; Song 1:13). צְרִי is the balm of Gilead (Jer 8:22, "Is there no balm in Gilead?"; 46:11). נְכֹאת is likely gum tragacanth; the LXX has θυμιάματα "incense." The WPRB has "resin" for ladanum.

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    בֶּצַע is what one cuts off for oneself (the verb בָּצַע, to cut off a weaver's thread, Isa 38:12), gain, and often unjust gain: "haters of profit" (Exod 18:21). "What profit in my blood?" (Ps 30:10, מַה־בֶּצַע בְּדָמִי) is the same question on the lips of a man who fears for his own life. Judah asks what blood will earn, and in the next verse answers with silver. "Gain" is רָכַשׁ's.

19. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph" (KJV) / "Then Midianite traders passed by; and they drew Joseph up" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 40, 18

    The verse names Midianites, the Ishmaelites name the buyers, and v. 36 has Medanites selling him in Egypt, while 39:1 has Potiphar buy him "from the hand of the Ishmaelites." The subject of "they pulled" is not stated. If it is the Midianites, they found Joseph in the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites without the brothers' knowledge, and Reuben's empty pit (v. 29) follows; so Rashbam, and the text as it stands supports him. If it is the brothers, they pulled him up and sold him to the Ishmaelites as Judah urged (v. 27); so Rashi, who adds a chain of sales, Ishmaelites to Midianites to Medanites; and Joseph says to them "you sold me" (45:4–5). Judg 8:24 calls the Midianites "Ishmaelites," which suggests the one name could cover the other. Modern source criticism divides the verse between two accounts, one with Ishmaelites and Judah, one with Midianites and Reuben. Every name is printed as written and "they" is left without a stated subject, as in the Hebrew; the WPRB keeps the same "they." "Twenty silver": the unit is unstated, and "pieces" is supplied only in the WPRB. The names are in the table below.

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    הַיֶּלֶד אֵינֶנּוּ: "the child is not," the negative of existence with a suffix, used for the dead and the missing alike: Enoch "was not, for Elohim took him" (5:24); "one is not" (42:13); "Joseph is not and Simeon is not" (42:36), where Jacob says it; Rachel weeping for her children, "for he is not" (Jer 31:15). Reuben calls a seventeen-year-old "the child" (יֶלֶד): to a brother's grief he is the boy. אָנָה "where to" asks a direction, and he has nowhere to come.

21. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a kid of the goats" (KJV) / "a goat" (RSV)

    Rulings 20, 2, 127

    שָׂעִיר is the adjective "hairy" (27:11, 23) and, as a noun, the male goat (Lev 4:23; 16:8–10, the goat for Azazel), named for its coat; the plural is also the goat-demons of the wild (Lev 17:7; Isa 13:21). The noun is printed "hairy one," a split by construction from the adjective (20). "Goat" is עֵז's (here in the plural, "of goats") and "he-goat" עַתּוּד's (129e), so the root's own English is the one left to it, and it carries the chain. Jacob deceived his father with the skins of "kids of the goats" (גְּדָיֵי הָעִזִּים, 27:9, 16), so that he would feel "hairy, like Esau" (27:11, 23). Now his sons deceive him with the blood of "a hairy one of goats." Genesis Rabbah 84 draws the same line: he deceived with goats, and was deceived with a goat.

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 37, 2

    הַכֶּר־נָא, the hiphil of נָכַר "recognize," is the verb of the recognitions in the Jacob and Joseph stories (27:23, where Isaac "did not recognize him"; 42:7–8, where Joseph recognizes his brothers and they do not recognize him). "Recognize, please" returns in Tamar's mouth to Judah (38:25), and "he recognized" in v. 33 returns as Judah's "he recognized" (38:26). b. Sotah 10b and Genesis Rabbah 85 join the two: Judah said to his father "Recognize, please," and he heard "Recognize, please." The chain is held (37). The sons do not say "your son's tunic" or "Joseph's"; they say "the tunic of your son," and let the father name him.

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 126

    טָרֹף טֹרַף יוֹסֵף: the infinitive absolute of the qal with the pual, the passive, as "dying, he shall be made to die" (126g) has the active infinitive with the hophal. "Tearing, Joseph is torn" keeps both the doubling and the change of stem. טָרַף is the beast's verb (49:27, "Benjamin is a wolf that tears"); 31:39 has its noun, the "torn beast" Jacob did not bring to Laban. He who bore the loss of every torn beast now says his son is one. Jacob repeats the words in 44:28.

24. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "sackcloth" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 39, 37

    שַׂק is the coarse cloth, of goat hair, that mourners wear (2 Sam 3:31; Jonah 3:5–8), and the sack it makes. In 42:25, 27, 35 the same word is the brothers' grain sacks, into which Joseph has their silver put back. The one gloss "sack" keeps the father's mourning-cloth and the sons' sacks in one English word through the story (37); "-cloth" is the English idiom's addition. The WPRB has "sackcloth."

25. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "many days" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    רַב is "vast," and "vast days" would make the days themselves large. With a plural of time the adjective counts, so "many" is printed, as at 21:34.

26. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 127, 80, 18

    The piel "comfort" (5:29) is what the sons and daughters come to do; the hithpael is what Jacob refuses, "to comfort himself," to take comfort (127f; Ps 77:3 has the same refusal with the niphal). אֵרֵד אֶל־בְּנִי אָבֵל שְׁאֹלָה: "to my son" joins the father to the son he thinks is dead, and "to Sheol" is where they will meet. Sheol is the place of the dead, used as a name without the article, and takes a capital (80). This is its first occurrence; Jacob names it again for himself in 42:38; 44:29, 31. כִּי opens the speech as "For," the ground of the refusal.

27. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 8, 74

    "His father" is Jacob, weeping for Joseph, or, with Rashi, Isaac, who is still alive (he dies in 35:28–29, which tells his death ahead of its time) and weeps for Jacob's grief. The Hebrew does not say which, and the English keeps "his father" and "him" as they stand.

28. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the Midianites" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 18, 40

    The Masoretic text reads וְהַמְּדָנִים, "the Medanites," the people of Medan, Midian's brother, both sons of Abraham by Keturah (25:2). The Samaritan Pentateuch, the LXX (Μαδιηναῖοι), the Vulgate and the Peshitta read "Midianites," as in v. 28, and the KJV and RSV follow them. The Masoretic text is printed. Whether this is a fourth party (Rashi's chain of sales), a spelling of the same people, or a slip, the note at v. 28 sets out.

29. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "an officer of Pharaoh's" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 1, 25

    סָרִיס is the castrated court servant: "let not the eunuch say, 'I am a dry tree'" (Isa 56:3–4); the king's sons will be "eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon" (2 Kgs 20:18); "the chief of his eunuchs" (Dan 1:3). It is also a court title, from Akkadian ša rēši "the one of the head," and some who bear it are married men; Potiphar has a wife (39:7). The stranger attested sense is printed (1). b. Sotah 13b and Genesis Rabbah 86 take it at its word: Potiphar bought Joseph for himself and was made a eunuch. The WPRB keeps "eunuch," which a reader can see is a title or a fact.

30. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "captain of the guard" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 39, 1

    טַבָּח is the cook who slaughters the meat: Samuel's cook, who sets the thigh before Saul (1 Sam 9:23–24). In the plural, under a שַׂר or רַב, it is the king's men who do the killing and keep the prisoners: Nebuzaradan the רַב־טַבָּחִים burns the temple (2 Kgs 25:8). Targum Onkelos has "executioners," Rashi "slaughterers of the king's animals." "Butchers" keeps the knife the noun names and both sides of it, the kitchen and the guard; "slaughter" is שָׁחַט's (v. 31). The officer's house holds a prison (39:20–40:3), and Joseph meets Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker there.