Genesis 40:11

Summary

The chief cupbearer describes the third and final action of his dream: Pharaoh's cup was in his hand, he took grapes, squeezed them into the cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh's palm. The verse combines one nominal clause (the cup's location) with three sequential verbal actions.

Key words

• khos ("cup of", H3563A) — feminine singular construct noun, appearing three times in the verse (lines 2, 17, 23), anchoring the narrative to a single object that moves through the action.
• yadi ("my hand", H3027G + H9020) — construct noun with 1st-person suffix; establishes the starting point of the dream: the cup begins in the speaker's own hand.
• va'eqqach ("and I took", H3947G) — qal verb in narrative form (vav-consecutive), 1st person; the first of three sequential actions performed by the speaker.
• va'esechat ("and I squeezed", H7818) — qal narrative verb, 1st person; the second action, describing the pressing of the grapes directly into the cup.
• va'etten ("and I put/gave", H5414H) — qal narrative verb, 1st person; the third and final action, transferring the cup to Pharaoh's kaf ("palm of", H3709G).

What the text says

The verse opens without a narrative vav on the first clause: ve-khos par'oh be-yadi ("and the cup of Pharaoh was in my hand"), a nominal (verbless) sentence that sets the scene before action begins. Hebrew often omits the verb "to be" in present-tense descriptive clauses, so the reader supplies "was" from context.

After this static opening, three verbs are chained using the narrative vav (va-) construction: va'eqqach ("and I took"), va'esechat ("and I squeezed"), va'etten ("and I put"). This vav-consecutive pattern is standard for reporting sequential events in Biblical Hebrew narrative — each verb picks up from the previous one, producing a tight chronological sequence: taking, squeezing, giving. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) appears before each object (grapes, them, the cup) but is not translated; it simply marks these nouns as the grammatical objects of the verbs.

The repetition of khos par'oh ("cup of Pharaoh") at the start and again in line 17 emphasizes that the same cup receives the pressed juice, while the final action specifies the vessel is placed 'al-kaf par'oh ("on the palm of Pharaoh"), naming the hand more specifically as kaf ("palm", H3709G) rather than repeating yad ("hand", H3027G) used earlier for the speaker's own hand.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence with ἔλαβον ("I took"), ἐξέθλιψα ("I squeezed out"), and ἔδωκα ("I gave"), matching the Hebrew's three-verb chain. However, where the Hebrew specifies kaf par'oh ("palm of Pharaoh"), the LXX has τὰς χεῖρας Φαραώ ("the hands of Pharaoh," plural), differing from the Hebrew's singular kaf. The Vulgate's manu Pharaoni also reflects a general "hand" rather than the more specific "palm" of the Hebrew kaf.