Genesis 37:32

Summary

The brothers send Joseph's garment to their father Jacob, telling him they found it and asking him to determine whether it belongs to his son. The verse combines narrative action (sending, bringing, saying) with direct speech containing a command and a question.

Key words

• ke.To.net ("[the] long garment of", H3801) — feminine singular construct noun, appears twice (in ke.To.net ha.pa.Sim and again in the brothers' question), each time governing what follows ("garment of the palms/soles," "garment of your son").
• ha.ker- ("investigate", H5234A) — hiphil (causative) imperative, a direct command from the brothers to Jacob to examine the garment himself.
• Na' ("please", H4994) — interjection softening the imperative, added to the command ha.ker-.
• ma.Tza.nu ("we have found", H4672) — qal perfect, first person plural, marking completed action; the brothers present the finding as already accomplished fact.
• hi' ("[is] it", H1931) — third person feminine singular personal pronoun, referring back to ke.To.net ("garment"), which is grammatically feminine, and linking the subject of the question to the predicate "your son's."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of three narrative verbs marked by the vav-consecutive: y.sha.le.Chu ("they sent", H7971G, piel), i.ya.Vi.'u ("they brought", H0935P, hiphil), and i.yo.me.Ru ("they said", H0559, qal). This sequence moves the action forward: sending the object, bringing it to the father, then speaking. The piel form of "send" and hiphil form of "brought" both carry causative/intensive nuances embedded in the verb stem itself, though these do not necessarily change the basic sense in translation.

The direct speech that follows shifts from narrative perfect to imperative and then to a question. ma.Tza.nu uses the qal perfect to state the finding as a completed fact ("we have found"), while ha.ker- Na' forms a polite command ("investigate, please") using the hiphil imperative softened by the particle Na'. The final question uses the interrogative ha. (H9008) attached to ke.To.net, followed by the construct chain ke.To.net bin.Kha ("garment of your son"), the pronoun hi' ("it," feminine, agreeing with the feminine noun "garment"), and the disjunctive 'im- lo' ("or not"), producing the structure "Is the garment of your son it, or not?" — a rhetorical inversion compared to English word order, but conveying a direct either/or question addressed to Jacob.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew phrase ke.To.net ha.pa.Sim ("garment of the palms/soles/extremities", H3801 + H6446) is rendered in the LXX as χιτῶνα τὸν ποικίλον ("the multicolored tunic") and in the Vulgate simply as tunica without the descriptive qualifier present in the Hebrew construct phrase. The Spanish RV1909 and SBLIBRE follow the LXX/Vulgate tradition with "ropa/túnica de colores" ("garment/tunic of colors"), while the BSB renders it "robe of many colors," none of which reproduce the Hebrew term pa.Sim ("palms and soles", H6446) literally.