Genesis 39:16

Summary

The verse reports that Potiphar's wife kept Joseph's garment beside her after he fled, holding onto it until her husband ("his master") returned home. The clause is built around a narrative sequence culminating in a temporal clause marking the master's arrival.

Key words

• ta.Nach ("she placed", H5117) — hiphil (causative) verb with narrative vav; the causative stem indicates she actively "caused [the garment] to rest" beside her, not merely that it happened to be there.
• big.do ("his clothing", H899B) — masculine singular noun in construct with the 3ms suffix -o ("his"); grammatically singular, referring to a single garment.
• 'etzlah ("beside her", H681) — construct noun with 3fs suffix -h ("her"), forming a locative expression "at her side."
• bo' ("came/coming", H935G) — qal infinitive construct; introduces a temporal clause meaning "until the coming of…"
• 'adonav ("his master(s)", H113) — masculine plural construct with 3ms suffix -v ("his"); though plural in form, it functions as a singular referent (Potiphar), a common Hebrew pattern for terms of authority.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on ta.Nach, continuing the storyline begun in the preceding verses: "and she placed/laid" — a causative (hiphil) verb showing deliberate action rather than passive occurrence. Its direct object is bigdo, "his garment," a singular noun marked by the 3ms possessive suffix, followed by the locative phrase 'etzlah, "beside her," which also carries a possessive suffix (3fs), tightly binding the garment to her physical space.

The second half of the verse is a temporal clause introduced by 'ad ("until") governing the infinitive construct bo' ("the coming of"). This infinitive takes its own grammatical subject, 'adonav, "his master(s)," a plural noun form with a singular referent — a feature sometimes called a plural of respect or majesty, used here for the household master. The clause closes with 'el beto, "to his house," another construct chain with a possessive suffix, marking the destination of the master's return. The whole sentence is thus a single continuous narrative unit: action (placing the garment) → duration marker (until) → subject's arrival → destination (his house).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders bigdo ("his clothing," singular) as ta himatia ("the garments"), a plural where the Hebrew has a singular noun. The Vulgate text given diverges more substantially: it introduces the phrase "in argumentum ergo fidei" ("as proof, then, of faithfulness") and uses pallium ("cloak") along with marito revertenti ("to the husband returning"), an interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew's more neutral construction of placement and waiting.