Genesis 39:18

Summary

This verse concludes Potiphar's wife's accusation to her household: she describes that when she raised her voice and cried out, the man left his garment beside her and fled outside. The Hebrew presents this as a rapid sequence of narrative actions following a temporal clause.

Key words

• hariymi ("raised", H7311A) — hiphil (causative) infinitive construct with 1st person suffix; expresses "in my raising" or "when I raised," marking the temporal clause introduced by ka ("when", H9004).
• qoli ("my voice", H6963A) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, the object of the raising.
• va'e'qra' ("and I called out", H7121I) — qal narrative form (vayiqtol), continuing the temporal clause as a second action paired with the raising of the voice.
• ya'azov ("he left", H5800A) — qal narrative form, the first of three sequential main-clause actions describing the man's response.
• yanas ("he fled", H5127) — qal narrative form, paired with the directional hachutzah ("toward the outside", H2351 + H9011), the final action in the sequence.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two parts. The first is a temporal subordinate clause built with vayehi ("and it was", H1961) followed by ka + infinitive construct (ka-hariymi, "when I raised"), then a coordinated finite verb (va'e'qra', "and I called out"). This construction places the woman's action (raising her voice, calling out) as the background circumstance. The second part is the main narrative line, consisting of three consecutive vayiqtol verbs — ya'azov ("he left"), yanas ("he fled") — describing the man's reaction in rapid succession, with the directional hachutzah attached to the last verb to indicate motion "toward the outside."

The construct chain bigdo etzli ("his garment beside me", H0899B + H0681) places the garment and the speaker's proximity together without any verb of grasping or holding; the Hebrew simply states that the garment was left "beside" her, not that she held it.

Differences between versions

The LXX opens with ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν ("but when he heard"), introducing an explicit act of hearing on the man's part that is not present in the Hebrew, which instead has the woman describing her own actions (hariymi, va'e'qra') without reference to his hearing. The Vulgate similarly adds "cumque audisset me clamare" ("and when he had heard me cry out"), also supplying the verb "hear" absent from the Hebrew clause. The Vulgate further renders bigdo as "pallium quod tenebam" ("the cloak which I was holding"), adding the detail of holding that the Hebrew construct phrase bigdo etzli does not state. Where the Hebrew has a single verb yanas plus the directional hachutzah, the LXX uses two verbs, ἔφυγεν καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ἔξω ("he fled and went out"), splitting the single Hebrew action into two Greek verbs.