Genesis 40:10
וּבַגֶּפֶן שְׁלֹשָׁה שָׂרִיגִם וְהִיא כְפֹרַחַת עָלְתָה נִצָּהּ הִבְשִׁילוּ אַשְׁכְּלֹתֶיהָ עֲנָבִֽים׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וּבַגֶּ֖פֶן שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה שָׂרִיגִ֑ם וְהִ֤יא כְפֹרַ֙חַת֙ עָלְתָ֣ה נִצָּ֔הּ הִבְשִׁ֥ילוּ אַשְׁכְּלֹתֶ֖יהָ עֲנָבִֽים׃
ἐν ἐν δὲ τῇ ἀμπέλῳ τρεῖς πυθμένες, καὶ αὐτὴ θάλλουσα ἀνενηνοχυῖα βλαστούς· πέπειροι οἱ βότρυες σταφυλῆς.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
in qua erant tres propagines, crescere paulatim in gemmas, et post flores uvas maturescere:
La vid tenía tres ramas. De pronto comenzó a brotar y a florecer, hasta que sus racimos dieron uvas maduras.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y en la vid tres sarmientos; y ella como que brotaba, y arrojaba su flor, viniendo á madurar sus racimos de uvas:
and on the vine were three branches. As it budded, its blossoms opened and its clusters ripened into grapes.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse continues the cupbearer's dream account, describing a vine with three branches that progresses through stages: budding, blossoming, and finally ripening into grape clusters. The Hebrew presents this as a rapid sequence of completed actions.
Key words
- sa.ri.Gim ("branches", H8299) — masculine plural noun, the countable "tendrils" or "shoots" of the vine.
- fo.Ra.chat ("budding", H6524A) — qal participle, feminine singular, describing an ongoing or characteristic state ("the one budding") rather than a single completed act.
- 'al.Tah ("it went up", H5927G) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular, marking a completed action: the blossom "went up" or emerged.
- ni.Tza ("blossom", H5322A) + h ("its", H9024) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, literally "its blossom," grammatically bound to the following action.
- hiv.Shi.lu ("they ripened", H1310) — hiphil perfect, third person plural, a causative form: the clusters "caused [themselves] to ripen" or "brought to ripeness."
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence structure moves through a sequence of verbal forms that mark stages of growth. The vine (Ge.fen, H1612) is described first with a numbered inventory — she.lo.Shah sa.ri.Gim, "three branches" — establishing the scene. The pronoun Hi' ("it", H1931) then shifts focus to the vine's own action, introduced by the participle fo.Ra.chat ("budding"), which in Hebrew participial usage often conveys a process caught in progress rather than a single moment.
From this participial state, the text pivots to perfect-tense verbs — 'al.Tah ("it went up") and hiv.Shi.lu ("they ripened") — which grammatically present the blossoming and ripening as completed, sequential events rather than ongoing description. The hiphil form of hiv.Shi.lu is causative, meaning the clusters ('ash.ke.lo.Tei.ha, "its clusters") are grammatically presented as agents bringing themselves to ripeness, rather than being ripened by an external cause. The construct chains — ni.Tza-h ("its blossom") and 'ash.ke.lo.Tei-ha ("its clusters") — tie each stage of growth possessively back to the vine itself, reinforcing that this is one continuous organic process narrated in tightly linked clauses without much explicit connective language beyond the initial ve ("and", H9002).
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the sequence descriptively with participles (θάλλουσα, "flourishing"; ἀνενηνοχυῖα, "having brought forth") and a resulting state (πέπειροι, "ripe"), smoothing the Hebrew's shift from participle to perfect verbs into a more continuous descriptive flow. The Vulgate similarly uses infinitives (crescere, maturescere) to present the growth as a general process ("to grow gradually into buds... to ripen"), where the Hebrew's perfect verb forms mark discrete completed stages rather than a single gradual infinitive action.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.