Genesis 39:12

Summary

The verse narrates the culmination of the seduction scene: the woman seizes Joseph by his garment while asking him to lie with her, but he abandons the garment in her hand, flees, and exits the house. The Hebrew uses four consecutive narrative-vav verbs to present a rapid sequence of actions.

Key words

• tit.peSehu ("she seized him", H8610) — qal narrative verb with the 3rd person masculine singular object suffix hu ("him", H9033) fused onto it, marking the immediate action that opens the sentence.
• vigdo / bigdo ("his clothing", H0899B) — masculine singular noun in construct form with the possessive suffix o ("his", H9023); it appears twice in the verse, first as the object she grasps, then as the object he abandons.
• shikhVah ("lie!", H7901I) — qal imperative with a paragogic he (H9012) attached, a form that adds emphasis to the command rather than changing its basic meaning.
• ya'azov ("he left/abandoned", H5800A) — qal narrative verb describing Joseph's deliberate act of leaving the garment behind.
• yaNas ("he fled", H5127) and yeTze' ("he went out", H3318G) — two further qal narrative verbs, chained by the vav, that intensify the sense of escape.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of vav-narrative verbs (tit.peSehu, ya'azov, yaNas, yeTze'), a construction typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling that presents events as a tightly linked sequence: seize → abandon → flee → go out. This chaining gives the verse a rapid, almost breathless pace, mirroring the urgency of Joseph's escape.

The word bigdo ("his clothing", H0899B) is repeated with the same construct form in both halves of the verse — once as what she grabs (bevigdo, "by his clothing") and once as what he leaves behind (bigdo beyadah, "his clothing in her hand"). This repetition creates a structural symmetry: the garment that begins in his possession ends in hers, physically marking the reversal of the encounter. The preposition beyadah ("in her hand", built from H3027H + suffix H9024) makes explicit that the garment remains as evidence in the woman's possession, a detail the Hebrew states directly rather than implying.

The imperative shikhVah carries a paragogic he, a suffix that Biblical Hebrew grammar often uses to add emphasis or urgency to a command, though it does not alter the core meaning "lie."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders bigdo ("his clothing") with the plural τῶν ἱματίων / τὰ ἱμάτια ("garments") in both occurrences, where the Hebrew consistently uses a singular noun. The LXX also expresses the abandonment with a participle (καταλείπων, "leaving") rather than a finite verb matching the Hebrew's narrative form. Additionally, the Hebrew and the Vulgate both specify that the garment was left "in her hand" (beyadah / "in manu ejus"), while the LXX's clause on this action does not include an equivalent phrase for "in her hand." The Vulgate uses two different Latin terms for the garment — lacinia vestimenti ("hem of the garment") for the first instance and pallio ("cloak") for the second — where the Hebrew repeats the same noun bigdo both times.