Genesis 37:18

Summary

The verse describes how Joseph's brothers spotted him while he was still far away, and before he reached them, they formed a plan to kill him. The Hebrew text uses temporal sequencing to show that the plotting began prior to any direct encounter.

Key words

• va-yir'u ("and they saw", H7200G) — qal narrative verb, plural, opens the sequence of events with the classic "and then" narrative chain.
• me-rachok ("from a distance", H7350) — preposition + adjective, specifies the spatial condition under which the brothers first perceived Joseph.
• be-terem ("before", H2962) — preposition combined with a temporal term, marking that what follows (his approach) had not yet occurred.
• yitnakelu ("they dealt deceptively with", H5230) — hithpael narrative verb, plural; the hithpael stem often carries a reflexive or reciprocal nuance, suggesting the brothers acted together or upon themselves in devising the scheme.
• lahamito ("to kill him", H4191) — hiphil infinitive with pronominal suffix "him"; the hiphil stem is causative, so the sense is "to cause his death," attached to a purpose-marking preposition la ("to/for").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a temporal frame: first va-yir'u 'oto merachok ("and they saw him from a distance") establishes the moment of sighting. Then the clause u-veterem yikrav 'aleihem ("and before he drew near to them") uses the imperfect verb yikrav ("he drew near", H7126G) within a terem ("before") construction, which in Biblical Hebrew narrative indicates an action that had not yet taken place at the time of the main verb — here, the brothers' plotting. This creates a sequence: seeing → (before arrival) → plotting, all chained by the narrative vav on va-yitnakelu ("and they dealt deceptively", H5230).

The verb yitnakelu is in the hithpael stem, which in this root often conveys a sense of collaborative or self-directed scheming — the brothers are grammatically marked as jointly engaging in the deceptive plan, not merely each individually deciding. The purpose of this plotting is stated through the infinitive construct lahamito ("to kill him", H4191), built on the causative hiphil of the root for "to die," attached to the preposition la ("to/for") and the object suffix -o ("him"). This infinitive construction expresses the intended goal of the scheming rather than a completed action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yitnakelu ("they dealt deceptively with", H5230) as ἐπορεύοντο ("they went" or "they proceeded"), paired with the infinitive ἀποκτεῖναι ("to kill"), producing a sense of physical advancing toward action rather than the Hebrew's emphasis on collaborative scheming implied by the hithpael. The Vulgate uses cogitaverunt ("they thought/planned"), which conveys mental deliberation, closer to "plotting" than to the LXX's "proceeded." The Hebrew terem ("before", H2962) clause structure, marking a precise temporal sequence, is preserved in the Vulgate's antequam ("before") and the LXX's πρὸ τοῦ ("before"), though the LXX's phrasing πρὸ τοῦ ἐγγίσαι αὐτὸν πρὸς αὐτούς shifts the subject slightly by emphasizing Joseph's approaching them as a single event rather than the ongoing/future nuance carried by the Hebrew imperfect yikrav.