Genesis 37:12

Summary

The verse reports that Joseph's brothers departed to pasture their father's flock, specifying the location as Shechem. It is a simple narrative sentence introduced by the standard vav-consecutive construction of Biblical Hebrew storytelling.

Key words

• va-yelkhu ("and they went", H1980) — qal narrative verb form (vav-consecutive), marking the next event in the story sequence; masculine plural subject.
• 'echav ("brothers of", H0251) — masculine plural noun in construct state, requiring a following genitive; here completed by the possessive suffix "his."
• lir'ot ("to pasture", H7462) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition li ("to"), expressing purpose: "in order to pasture."
• tzon ("flock of", H6629) — common-gender singular noun in construct state, linked to the next word as its genitive.
• 'avihem ("their father", H0001) — masculine singular noun in construct state carrying the plural suffix "their," itself governed by tzon.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of construct relationships. 'Echav ("brothers of") takes a pronominal suffix meaning "his brothers," and the whole phrase is the subject of va-yelkhu ("and they went"), a qal verb in the narrative (vav-consecutive) form typical of sequential storytelling in Biblical Hebrew — it signals "and then this happened" rather than expressing tense independently.

The purpose of the going is expressed through the infinitive construct lir'ot ("to pasture"), governed by the preposition li. This infinitive takes its own object, marked by the untranslated direct object marker 'et (H0853), followed by another construct chain: tzon 'avihem ("flock of their father"). Here tzon ("flock of") is in construct state, meaning it must be completed by a following noun — 'avihem ("their father") — which itself carries the plural suffix "their." This produces the sense "the flock belonging to their father," built entirely through juxtaposition and suffixes rather than separate possessive words.

The verse closes with the locative phrase bi-Shekhem ("at Shechem"), using the preposition bi ("at/in") attached directly to the place name.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the main verb differently: instead of "they went" (Hebrew va-yelkhu), it uses morarentur ("were staying/tarrying"), framed within a subordinate clause beginning "Cumque" ("And when"), which restructures the Hebrew's simple sequential narrative into a temporal clause. The LXX follows the Hebrew's action verb more closely with "Ἐπορεύθησαν" ("they went"). The modern translations BSB ("Some time later") and SBLIBRE ("Un día") add temporal markers not present in the Hebrew text, which simply continues the narrative sequence without specifying elapsed time.