Genesis 41:13

Summary

This verse is the cupbearer's report to Pharaoh, confirming that the dream interpretations given by the young Hebrew (Joseph) in prison came true exactly as predicted: the cupbearer was restored to his position, while the baker was hanged.

Key words

• pathar ("he interpreted", H6622) — qal perfect of the verb for dream interpretation; completed action, referring back to the earlier prison scene.
• ken ("so", H3651C) — adverb of correspondence, paired with ka'asher ("as", H0834D) earlier in the verse to form the construction "just as... so it was," emphasizing exact fulfillment.
• hashiv ("he restored", H7725H) — hiphil (causative) perfect: the causative stem marks that someone else caused the restoration to happen — Pharaoh acted upon the cupbearer, rather than the cupbearer returning on his own.
• kanni ("my office", H3653 + H9020) — noun in construct form with 1st person suffix, "office/place of me," referring to the specific post held before imprisonment.
• talah ("he hanged", H8518) — qal perfect, describing the fate of the baker, structurally parallel to hashiv but in the simple (non-causative) stem.

What the text says

The verse is built on a strict grammatical parallelism between two clauses, each describing the fate of one of the two servants. The first clause opens with ka'asher... ken ("just as... so"), a correlative construction that frames the entire sentence: what was predicted (pathar, "he interpreted") matches what occurred (hayah, "it was"). This structure places emphasis on correspondence between interpretation and outcome, using two perfect-tense verbs from the same root pattern to reinforce the sense of a closed, completed action.

The second half of the verse presents two symmetrical clauses, each marked by the object marker 'oti / 'oto ("me" / "him", H0853 + suffix) placed before the verb — a fronting that puts the direct object first, syntactically highlighting the contrast between the two men's fates. The verb hashiv is hiphil, indicating that the restoration to office was caused by an external agent (implicitly Pharaoh), not self-initiated. By contrast, talah ("he hanged") is qal, describing the action or state of the baker without the same explicit causative marking, though it is understood as something done to him.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate adds a phrase not present in the Hebrew or LXX: "audivimus quidquid postea rei probavit eventus" ("we heard whatever the subsequent outcome proved"), an expansion not found in the other texts. The Vulgate also specifies "in cruce" ("on the cross/gallows") for the hanging, a detail absent from both the Hebrew talah ("he hanged") and the Greek kremasthēnai ("to be hanged"), neither of which specifies the means.