Genesis 39:21

Summary

The verse states that Yehovah was present with Joseph while he was imprisoned, extending to him chesed ("covenant loyalty", H2617A) and causing the prison warden to view him with chen ("favor", H2580). The sentence uses two parallel actions attributed to Yehovah, both benefiting Joseph's standing before the official in charge of the prison.

Key words

• y.Hi ("he was", H1961) — qal narrative verb (vayiqtol form), opening the clause as a new narrative event: "and it happened / and he was."
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the subject of both verbs in the verse; the divine name performs the actions described.
• chesed ("covenant loyalty", H2617A) — masculine singular noun, the object of yet ("he extended", H5186); it names the quality Yehovah extends to Joseph.
• chen ("favor", H2580) — masculine singular noun in construct form ("favor of him"), object of yitten ("he gave", H5414G); construct + suffix marks it as "his favor," i.e., the favor granted to Joseph.
• sar beit ha-sohar ("commander of the house of the prison", H8269/H1004B/H5470) — a three-term construct chain identifying the specific official whose perception is affected.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from three consecutive narrative (vayiqtol) verbs, all with Yehovah understood as the grammatical subject: y.Hi ("he was") with Joseph, yet ("he extended") chesed to him, and yitten ("he gave") chen in the eyes of the prison commander. This chaining device (vav + narrative verb) presents the actions as a sequence of connected events rather than a general statement. The noun chesed (H2617A) and the noun chen (H2580) are placed in parallel: the first describes an inner disposition extended toward Joseph, the second describes the external effect — how Joseph appears "in the eyes of" (be-'einei, construct dual) the official. The construct chain sar beit ha-sohar stacks three nouns ("commander of / house of / the prison") to specify precisely which authority figure grants Joseph favorable treatment.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders chesed (H2617A) as "misertus" ("having had mercy"), which shifts the semantic field from covenant loyalty toward compassion/pity. The LXX (Swete) text given is fragmentary at this point (κατέχεεν αὐτοῦ αὐτοῦ), but where legible it uses "ἐναντίον" ("before") rather than the Hebrew's "in the eyes of" (be-'einei, H5869H), a spatial rather than perceptual framing. The Hebrew's two distinct terms, chesed and chen, are both rendered in some translations (e.g., BSB, RV1909) with overlapping English words ("kindness"/"favor" or "misericordia"/"gracia"), which can obscure that the Hebrew uses two separate nouns for two related but distinct concepts.