Genesis 45

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   The hithpael of אָפַק is the verb of 43:31: there Joseph wept in his room, washed his face, "held himself in," and ordered the bread served. Now he cannot. "Before all those stationed by him" (לְכֹל הַנִּצָּבִים עָלָיו) are his Egyptian attendants. His order uses the hiphil of יָצָא, "bring out," so the Egyptians are put out of the room before the brothers are told. Rashi: he could not bear that the Egyptians should stand by and see his brothers put to shame when he made himself known. The hithpael of יָדַע, "made himself known," is reflexive, the stem of Num 12:6 ("in a vision I make myself known to him").

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the Egyptians … heard" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 18, 134

   The Hebrew is מִצְרַיִם, "Egypt," with a plural verb, the land standing for its people, as at 41:55–56. The source tags this token as the gentilic H4713 ("Egyptian"), and the tag is kept and logged as there (134l); the word printed is the name the text has. The weeping is heard as far as Pharaoh's house, which v. 16 takes up ("the voice was heard in the house of Pharaoh").

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 133

   The niphal of בָּהַל is to be alarmed, shaken with sudden fear: the chiefs of Edom (Exod 15:15), Saul before the medium (1 Sam 28:21), "my bones are alarmed" (Ps 6:3). The root also has a sense of haste (Esth 6:14; Prov 28:22; Eccl 5:1), the rush of panic. "Dismay" belongs to חִתָּה and חַת (133a). "Before his face" is מִפָּנָיו, "from his face": the alarm comes from the sight of him.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 37, 95

   מִחְיָה is a noun from the verb חָיָה, "keeping alive": food that keeps life going (Judg 6:4; 17:10), a little reviving (Ezra 9:8–9), even the live flesh of a sore (Lev 13:10, 24). Joseph's speech chains the root: "for keeping alive Elohim sent me" (v. 5), and "to keep alive for you" (v. 7, the hiphil). The chain is kept (37) by giving the noun the verb's English. Joseph repeats the claim three times (vv. 5, 7, 8), and at 50:20 he says it again: "Elohim reckoned it for good, … to keep alive a numerous people."

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "to save your lives by a great deliverance" (KJV) / "to keep alive for you many survivors" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 40

   וּלְהַחֲיוֹת לָכֶם לִפְלֵיטָה גְּדֹלָה has two readings. (a) "To keep you alive, as a great escape": לָכֶם is the object, as the לְ before an object in late Hebrew, and לִפְלֵיטָה says what the keeping alive amounts to (KJV). (b) "To keep alive for you a great escape": פְּלֵיטָה is the part of a people that gets away (32:9; 2 Sam 15:14; Ezra 9:13–15), so here the survivors, and the לְ marks the object (RSV). The parallel "to put for you a remnant" favours (b), since remnant and escape are the pair of 2 Kgs 19:30–31 and Isa 37:31–32. The LXX takes the noun as an object. "To keep alive for you, for a great escape" keeps the two prepositions as they stand, so English holds both readings (1).

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 9, 123

   לֹא אַתֶּם … כִּי הָאֱלֹהִים: after a negative, כִּי is "but," and the negation and the correction are both kept: "not you … but the Elohim." The article with singular agreement in the next verb (וַיְשִׂימֵנִי) makes it "the Elohim," capitalised (123c). "A father to Pharaoh" is a title of counsel and authority; Eliakim is made "a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Isa 22:21). An Egyptian court title, "father of the god," is often compared. The three titles, father, lord and one ruling, are given in the order of their closeness to the king.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   עָמַד is "stand," and "do not stand" is "do not stand still, do not stay": the verb of 19:17 ("do not stand anywhere in the plain") and Josh 10:13 (the sun "stood"). The WPRB has "do not delay."

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "lest thou … come to poverty" (KJV) / "lest you … come to poverty" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 20, 45

   The niphal of יָרַשׁ, the verb "possess," is to be made poor, to have one's holdings taken: "do not love sleep, lest you come to poverty (תִּוָּרֵשׁ)" (Prov 20:13); "the drunkard and the glutton come to poverty" (23:21); "lest I be poor and steal" (30:9). The home gloss in the passive, "be possessed," would make a false sense in English, so it yields (guide §9). "Be dispossessed" keeps the English root of the home gloss and the sense of being stripped of what one holds. The niphal is split from the qal by stem (135l).

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 39

   צַוְּארֵי "necks" is plural, the idiom's usual form for one neck (33:4 Esau on Jacob; 46:29 Joseph on Jacob). English has one neck to a man, and the home gloss is printed in the singular. Esau "fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept" (33:4): the reconciliation of the brothers in Gen 33 is repeated here in the next generation.

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 4

    חוּס with "eye" as subject is to spare, to look on something with regret at its loss: "your eye shall not spare them" (Deut 7:16; 13:9; 19:13); "my eye will not spare" (Ezek 5:11); Jonah's plant, which he spared, and Nineveh, which Adonai spares (Jonah 4:10–11). Pharaoh's meaning is "do not regret the things you leave": let the eye not spare them, let it give them up, for the good of all Egypt is theirs. KJV "regard not your stuff"; RSV "give no thought to your goods."

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 6, 91

    חֲלִפוֹת is "changes": sets of clothes to change into, festal garments (Judg 14:12–13, 19; 2 Kgs 5:5, 22–23), from חָלַף, the root of Laban's "you changed my wage ten times" (31:7, 41). Job uses it of his own "change" (14:14). The brothers once stripped Joseph of his tunic (37:23) and dipped it in blood (37:31); now he clothes them. Benjamin's gift is "three hundred of silver," with the unit left unnamed, as in Abimelech's "a thousand of silver" (20:16). Benjamin receives five times the others' portion, as at the table (43:34).

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "See that ye fall not out by the way" (KJV) / "Do not quarrel on the way" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 46

    רָגַז is to be stirred, shaken, agitated, by fear or by anger. Of fear: "the peoples heard, they were stirred up" (Exod 15:14); "Sheol beneath is stirred up for you" (Isa 14:9). Of anger: "the king was shaken" (2 Sam 19:1); Ps 4:5 רִגְזוּ וְאַל־תֶּחֱטָאוּ, which the LXX renders ὀργίζεσθε καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε, quoted at Eph 4:26, "be angry and do not sin." The readings of Joseph's charge divide the same way. Onkelos and Rashi read a quarrel: do not fall out on the road over the sale ("you told us to sell him"). The LXX has μὴ ὀργίζεσθε, "do not be angry." Some medieval readers, Rashbam among them, read fear: do not be afraid on the road. "Quarrel" is the home gloss of רִיב and takes one side. "Be stirred up" holds anger and fear, as the Hebrew does.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    וְכִי הוּא מֹשֵׁל: the כִּי here is emphatic, "and indeed," or it introduces the second item of what they reported ("and that he is ruling"). The brothers' report has two clauses, and the second is the one Jacob cannot take in.

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 37, 74

    The qal of חָיָה is "live," and it is printed here: "the spirit of Jacob lived," came to life again. The chapter turns on the root: Joseph asks whether his father is still "living" (חַי, v. 3); Elohim sent him "for keeping alive" (v. 5) and "to keep alive" (v. 7); the brothers report that Joseph is "still living" (v. 26); Jacob's spirit "lived" (v. 27); and Jacob says Joseph is "still living" (v. 28). Samson's spirit "returned, and he lived" (Judg 15:19). Onkelos reads it as prophecy: "the spirit of prophecy rested on Jacob their father"; Rashi adds that the Presence, which had left him in his grief, rested on him again.

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "It is enough" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 45

    רַב "vast" stands alone as an exclamation: "Enough!", as in Elijah's "enough, now, Adonai, take my soul" (1 Kgs 19:4) and "you have dwelt long enough (רַב־לָכֶם) at this mountain" (Deut 1:6; 2:3; 3:26). "Vast!" would make no sense in English, so the home gloss yields (guide §9). Onkelos reads the same word as "much": "much is my joy," Joseph is still alive. The verse names him Israel; the narrator used "Jacob" in vv. 25 and 27.