Genesis 42

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Why do ye look one upon another?" (KJV) / "Why do you look at one another?" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 2

   תִּתְרָאוּ is the hithpael of רָאָה "see," and the stem reads two ways. (a) Reciprocal, "see one another": 2 Kgs 14:8, 11, where Amaziah's "let us look one another in the face" is a challenge to battle; hence the KJV and RSV. (b) Reflexive, "make yourselves seen, show yourselves": Rashi, "why do you show yourselves before the sons of Ishmael and Esau as if you were sated?", that is, why are you seen to have food when you do not. The versions guess at the sense from the context: the LXX ἵνα τί ῥᾳθυμεῖτε "why are you idle?", Onkelos "why are you afraid?" English cannot hold both readings with one verb. Ruling 1 prints the stranger, reflexive reading, and the home gloss "see" is held inside it (2). "Stare" is שָׁאָה's and "look" is הִנֵּה's, so the reciprocal reading could not have been printed without a second departure.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "he it was that sold to all the people of the land" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 20, 134

   הַמַּשְׁבִּיר is the hiphil participle of שָׁבַר, the verb whose qal is "buy rations" (vv. 2–3, 5, 7, 10): the causative, "make (them) buy rations," is selling them. Ruling 134(g) held the hiphil for this verse; it is printed "seller of rations," a split by stem (20) beside the qal, and keeps the noun שֶׁבֶר "rations" in view. The packet shows no earlier printing of the hiphil (at 41:56 the qal had Joseph as subject and was logged). "Sell" alone is מָכַר's (37:27–28, 36); the compound gloss keeps them apart. Joseph sells to "all the people of the land," and his brothers come to him as any buyer does.

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "made himself strange unto them" (KJV) / "treated them like strangers" (RSV)

   Rulings 20, 127, 2

   The verse sets two stems of נָכַר side by side: וַיַּכִּרֵם "and he recognized them," the hiphil (the recognitions of 27:23; 37:32–33; 38:25–26), and וַיִּתְנַכֵּר, the hithpael, "he made himself foreign." The hithpael is the stem of the noun נֵכָר "foreignness" and נָכְרִי "foreign" (129a): Jeroboam's wife "makes herself foreign," disguises herself (1 Kgs 14:5–6). So the man who knows them makes himself a foreigner to them, the same root twice, and v. 8 then turns it again: "he recognized them, and they did not recognize him." "Recognize" cannot carry the reflexive, so the hithpael takes its own English, a split by stem (20) that the lexicon row of נָכַר, which names the hiphil only, has not yet declared. The packet shows no earlier printing of the hithpael of נָכַר: unknown.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   לָהֶם "to them, for them, of them": the dreams of 37:5–10 were about the brothers, sheaves and stars bowing down, and the brothers have just bowed "nostrils to the ground" (v. 6). Rashi reads it so: he knew that the dreams had been fulfilled, for they had bowed to him. "Of them" keeps the dreams about them, not told to them.

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "We are true men" (KJV) / "We are honest men" (RSV)

   Rulings 20, 2

   כֵּנִים is the plural adjective כֵּן, "right, honest": the daughters of Zelophehad "speak right" (Num 27:7); "we are not doing right" (2 Kgs 7:9). It belongs to the root of כּוּן "be fixed, firm," so it is the man who stands as he says he stands. The source tags it with the adverb כֵּן "thus" (H3651), under which Strong's files both; the tag is kept and the adjective is printed "honest," a split by construction, at every occurrence (vv. 11, 19, 31, 33, 34). It is a different word from כֵּן "base" (H3653, 40:13; 41:13). "True" would take the stem of אֱמֶת "truth" (v. 16), which the same speech uses.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 21, 74

   חֵי פַרְעֹה "life of Pharaoh" is the oath form of חַי ("as Adonai lives," Judg 8:19; 1 Sam 14:39), sworn here by the king's life, as the brothers will later hear it sworn. The literal "if" is kept with the curse unspoken (21): "if you go out from here" means you shall not. In v. 16 the oath is followed by כִּי, the asseverative "for," and the sentence it introduces is the charge itself: "for spies you are." Both clauses keep the conjunction the Hebrew has.

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "I fear God" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 38, 92, 128, 134

   אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים has the article and no verb that agrees with it in the clause, so under 38 and 92 it is "the elohim," lowercase. Capitals go by the scene (128d, 129n, 134i). ADONAI is not named in Gen 42, and nothing in Joseph's speech to his brothers (vv. 7–24) gives Elohim a singular verb; v. 28, where Elohim does, is another scene, at the lodging on the road. So the scene leaves it open. The ambiguity is Joseph's own: he speaks to them as an Egyptian lord through a go-between (v. 23), and "the elohim" is what a foreign lord may say, as Abimelech's "fear of elohim" (20:11) was. The reader knows, as the brothers do not, that the speaker is the Joseph of 39:9 and 41:16. The WPRB keeps "the elohim" (WPRB guide, divine names).

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "when he besought us" (KJV) / "when he besought us" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 20

   בְּהִתְחַנְנוֹ is the hithpael of חָנַן "favor": to seek favor for oneself, to plead (Deut 3:23; 1 Kgs 8:33; Esth 4:8). "Begged favor" keeps the home gloss inside the stem's reflexive sense. 37:23–28 told nothing of Joseph's pleading in the pit; the brothers tell it here, twenty years on. אֲשֵׁמִים "liable" is the adjective of אָשָׁם "liability" (26:10), one root: they owe for him, as a debt is owed.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 39, 26

   כַּסְפֵּיהֶם is the plural of כֶּסֶף, "their silvers": each man's silver, counted man by man. It is not a plural of abstraction (26), and the concrete plural is kept (39), as in v. 35, "the bundles of their silvers."

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    וַיִּתֵּן אֹתָנוּ כִּמְרַגְּלִים "and he gave us as spies": נָתַן with כְּ is to hold, to treat as (1 Kgs 10:27 "he gave the silver as stones"). The home gloss "give" is kept (2); the sense goes to the WPRB, "treated us as."

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    "and the hunger of your houses, take": the object is the hunger itself, short for the rations it needs, as in v. 19 "rations for the hunger of your houses." The LXX supplies the noun (τὸν δὲ ἀγορασμὸν τῆς σιτοδοσίας), and so do the KJV and RSV ("food for the famine"). The Hebrew is printed as it stands.

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Me have ye bereaved of my children" (KJV) / "You have bereaved me of my children" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 129

    שִׁכַּלְתֶּם is the piel of שָׁכֹל, the transitive "make bereaved." Ruling 129(j) deferred the piel split and holds "be bereaved" until it is made; "bereaved" is that gloss, here with Jacob as its object. The word is Rebekah's (27:45, "why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?") and returns at 43:14.