Genesis 39:19

Summary

The verse narrates that when Joseph's master heard his wife's account of what she claimed Joseph did, his anger burned. The Hebrew structure emphasizes the master's hearing as the trigger for his reaction, embedding the wife's direct speech within the report.

Key words

• y.Hi ("it was", H1961) — qal narrative form, the standard formula that opens a new narrative sequence ("and it happened that...").
• sh.Mo.a' ("heard", H8085) — qal infinitive construct following khi ("when"), forming the temporal clause "when he heard."
• div.Rei ("words of", H1697) — masculine plural construct, linking to "his wife" as "the words of his wife," i.e., what she said.
• di.be.Rah ("she spoke", H1696) — piel perfect, an intensive stem marking completed speech-action; introduces the relative clause describing what the wife said.
• i.Yi.char ("it burned", H2734) — qal narrative form describing the master's anger as a completed reaction, paired with 'a.P ("anger/nose", H0639) in the idiom "his nose burned."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-y.Hi ("and it was"), followed by a temporal clause built on the infinitive khi-sh.Mo.a' ("when [he] heard"). The subject of this hearing is 'a.do.Na-v ("his master"), a plural construct noun with a singular pronominal suffix — a form that in Hebrew can function as an honorific plural referring to one person, though the word-by-word data marks it grammatically as plural.

The object of hearing is div.Rei 'ish.T-o ("the words of his wife"), introduced by the direct object marker 'et-. This phrase is further specified by a relative clause: 'a.Sher di.be.Rah 'e.La-v ("which she spoke to him"), using the piel perfect di.be.Rah to mark her speech as a completed act. The content of her speech follows via le-Mor ("saying"), an infinitive construct commonly used in Biblical Hebrew to introduce direct quotation.

The quoted words themselves use ka-de.va.Rim ha-'E.leh ("according to these things/words") plus 'A.sah li 'av.De-kha ("your servant did to me"), placing the accusation in the wife's own reported voice. The final clause, va-yi.Yi.char 'a.P-o ("and his anger burned"), uses the common Hebrew idiom of the "nose burning" to express the master's emotional reaction, marked as a new narrative event by the vav-consecutive form.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'a.do.Na-v (plural form with singular suffix) as ho kyrios (singular "the lord/master"), smoothing the Hebrew's plural-honorific construction into a straightforward singular. The Vulgate similarly uses the singular dominus ("the lord"). Additionally, the Vulgate inserts an interpretive phrase, nimium credulus verbis conjugis ("too credulous of his wife's words"), which is not present in the Hebrew text's word-by-word data; the Hebrew simply states that the master heard and his anger burned, without an explicit comment on his credulity.