Genesis 37:11

Summary

Genesis 37:11 reports two contrasting reactions to Joseph within his family: his brothers respond with jealousy, while his father retains the matter internally. The verse uses a grammatical shift from narrative sequence to a disjunctive construction to mark this contrast.

Key words

• yeqan'u ("they were jealous", H7065) — piel stem (intensive/emotive force) with narrative vav-consecutive, linking this action directly to the preceding narrative flow.
• 'echav ("his brothers", H0251G) — construct plural noun with pronominal suffix, literally "brothers of-him."
• shamar ("he kept", H8104G) — qal perfect (simple stem, completed aspect), describing the father's action as a settled, simple act rather than an intensified one.
• davar ("matter/word/thing", H1697G) — masculine singular noun with definite article; a broad-range term that can mean "word," "thing," or "matter" depending on context.
• 'et- (H0853) — direct object marker, grammatically required before ha-davar but not translatable as a separate word.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses. The first, vayeqan'u-vo 'echav ("and his brothers were jealous of him"), uses the narrative vav-consecutive with a piel imperfect verb, continuing the story's forward momentum from the preceding verses about Joseph's dreams. The piel stem of qana' ("to be jealous", H7065) carries an intensive or emotionally charged nuance compared to the simpler qal stem.

The second clause, ve'aviv shamar 'et-hadavar ("but his father kept the matter"), shifts construction: instead of a vav-consecutive verb, it opens with the conjunction ve followed by the subject 'aviv ("his father") before the verb shamar. This word order (conjunction + noun + perfect verb, rather than vav-consecutive + verb + noun) is a disjunctive pattern that Hebrew narrative often uses to mark contrast or a parenthetical aside, setting the father's response apart from the brothers' reaction. The verb shamar here is qal perfect, a simple, completed action, contrasting with the piel intensive verb used for the brothers' jealousy.

The noun davar (H1697G) is grammatically ambiguous between "word," "thing," and "matter" — the text does not specify which sense applies through morphology alone.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders shamar as considerabat ("was considering") and adds tacitus ("silently"), a qualifier not present in the Hebrew or the Greek. The Septuagint renders davar as rhēma ("word/saying"), while the Vulgate uses rem ("thing/matter") — reflecting the semantic breadth of the underlying Hebrew davar, which can support either translation.