Genesis 40:20

Summary

The verse narrates that on the third day, Pharaoh's birthday, he held a feast for his servants, and in that setting he "lifted up the head" of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker — an idiom whose precise meaning (restoration to office vs. execution) is disambiguated only by the following verses.

Key words

• hulLedet ("being born", H3205) — hophal infinitive construct: the causative-passive form expresses "the being-caused-to-be-born," i.e., the day Pharaoh was born, marking this as a birthday commemoration rather than a generic "day."
• yisSa' ("he lifted up", H5375) — qal narrative form of the verb "to lift/carry"; combined with rosh ("head") it forms the idiom nasa' rosh, "to lift the head," used elsewhere in the passage's wider context in contrasting senses.
• rosh ("head of", H7218) — construct noun, twice repeated (once for each official), syntactically binding "head" to "chief of the cupbearers" and "chief of the bakers" respectively.
• sar hammashqim ("chief of the cupbearers", H8269 + H4945) — construct chain where mashqim is a hiphil participle, "those who cause to drink," functioning as a substantive title.
• betokh 'avadav ("among his servants", H8432 + H5650) — construct phrase locating the two officials spatially/socially within the larger body of Pharaoh's 'avadav ("his servants", H5650), the same word used earlier for "all his servants" at the feast.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula vayehi ("and it was", H1961) followed by a temporal clause: "on the third day, the day of the being-born of Pharaoh" — the hophal infinitive hulLedet marks this specifically as an anniversary of birth, a day of birth, structurally parallel to a construct chain ("day of..."). The narrative then moves through three consecutive vav-narrative verbs (vayehi, vaya'as, vayissa'), each marking sequential action: Pharaoh "was" in this day, he "made" a feast, and he "lifted" the head of the two officials.

The idiom nasa' rosh ("to lift the head") is expressed here without further qualifying verb — the Hebrew does not specify at this point in the verse whether "lifting the head" means restoring someone to a position or removing them for execution; the construct chains rosh sar hammashqim ("head of the chief of the cupbearers") and rosh sar ha'ofim ("head of the chief of the bakers") simply name the object being lifted. The final phrase betokh 'avadav ("among his servants") locates this act within the same group of servants ('avadav) mentioned earlier as feast guests, using the same noun (H5650) for both, which links the feast context to the act performed on the two officials.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders vayissa' et-rosh ("he lifted the head of") as emnēsthē ("he remembered/called to mind"), interpretively specifying the act as an act of memory concerning the "office" (archēs) of the chief cupbearer and chief baker, rather than a literal "lifting of the head." The Vulgate similarly uses recordatus est ("he remembered"), converging with the LXX's interpretive reading rather than the Hebrew's more literal idiom. The Hebrew itself, by contrast, only states that Pharaoh "lifted the head," without the verb "to remember" present in either Greek or Latin.