Genesis 37:9

Summary

Joseph has a second dream, which he reports to his brothers. In the dream, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bow down to him. The verse frames the dream report with two occurrences of the interjection hinneh ("here!"/"there!"), marking vivid, direct speech.

Key words

• yachalom ("he dreamed", H2492B) — qal narrative form, continuing the story sequence ("and then he dreamed").
• yesapper ("he recounted", H5608A) — piel (intensive) narrative form; the piel stem gives the sense of a fuller, more elaborated telling than a simple report.
• echav ("his brothers", H0251G) — masculine plural noun in construct with the pronominal suffix -v ("his"), specifying the audience of the account.
• mishtachavim ("were bowing down", H7812) — hithpael (reflexive) participle, masculine plural; the participle presents the bowing as an ongoing, visualized action within the dream rather than a completed event.
• hinneh ("here!"/"there!", H2009) — interjection used twice, marking the dream's contents as presented vividly, as if seen directly.

What the text says

The verse opens with two narrative vav-forms, yachalom ("he dreamed") and yesapper ("he recounted"), which chain the actions in sequence: first the dreaming, then the telling. The object of the dream, chalom acher ("another dream"), is marked by the adjective acher ("another", H0312), distinguishing this dream from the one recounted in the previous verses. The direct object marker 'et plus the suffix -o ("it") shows that "it" (the dream) is what gets told le-echav ("to his brothers").

Joseph's speech is introduced by hinneh ("here!"), followed by a first-person perfect verb chalamti ("I have dreamed"), emphasizing personal experience. This is followed by a second hinneh ("there!"), which shifts to descriptive presentation of the dream's imagery: the sun, the moon, and achad asar kokhavim ("eleven stars," literally "one-ten stars," a construct expression for the number eleven) are the subjects of the participle mishtachavim ("bowing down"). The participle form, together with the preposition li ("to me"), presents the bowing as a scene unfolding before the dreamer, addressed to "me."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew states that Joseph told the dream le-echav ("to his brothers") only. The LXX reads that he told it "τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ" ("to his father and to his brothers"), adding a recipient not present in the Hebrew clause at this point. Additionally, where the Hebrew presents the bowing celestial bodies directly after hinneh with no comparative particle, the LXX inserts ὥσπερ ("as though/like") and the Vulgate inserts quasi ("as if"), both framing the sun, moon, and stars' bowing as a simile rather than as a direct depiction, as in the Hebrew's two uses of hinneh.