Exodus 1:8

Summary

Exodus 1:8 introduces a narrative shift: a new king rises to power over Egypt, one who did not have knowledge of Joseph. The verse marks a temporal and political transition from the era described in Genesis to a new phase in the story of the Israelites in Egypt.

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — narrative vav opening the clause, linking this event to the preceding storyline as a sequential development.
• i.Ya.kom ("he arose", H6965B) — qal narrative verb form; the raising up of the king is presented as a single completed narrative event ("and then he arose").
• Me.lekh ("a king", H4428G) — masculine singular noun, unspecified/indefinite, introducing this figure without further identification (no personal name given).
• cha.Dash ("new", H2319H) — masculine singular adjective modifying melekh, describing the king as "new" — the word carries the basic sense of novelty or freshness.
• ya.Da' ("he knew", H3045) — qal perfect verb, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), indicating a completed state of non-knowledge in the past relative to the narrative's present.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative vav-consecutive construction va-yYaqom ("and he arose"), a standard device for advancing narrative time by one step. The subject melekh chadash ("a new king") is introduced without a proper name, placed grammatically after the verb, which is typical Biblical Hebrew word order (verb–subject) for narrative clauses. The prepositional phrase 'al mitzrayim ("over Egypt") specifies the domain of this king's rule using 'al ("over", H5921A), indicating dominion rather than mere location.

The relative clause asher lo' yada' et-yosef ("who did not know Joseph") is attached to melekh chadash via the relative particle asher (H0834A). The verb yada' is in the qal perfect, denoting a completed and settled state — the king's lack of knowledge of Joseph is presented as a plain fact preceding or accompanying his rise, not as an ongoing process. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before yosef signals that Joseph is the grammatical object of the verb "knew," though this particle itself carries no independent meaning in translation.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew adjective cha.Dash ("new", H2319H) is rendered in the LXX as ἕτερος ("other" or "different"), which shifts the nuance from temporal novelty (a newly-arisen king) toward simple distinction from a previous king. The Vulgate's novus ("new") and most modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE, RV1909) follow the Hebrew sense of "new" rather than the LXX's "other."