Genesis 41:14

Summary

Pharaoh sends for Joseph and has him brought quickly from the pit. Before appearing before Pharaoh, Joseph shaves and changes clothes. The verse closes with Joseph coming before Pharaoh.

Key words

• yariytzuhu ("they brought him quickly", H7323) — hiphil (causative) form with 3rd person plural subject and a pronominal suffix hu ("him"). The causative stem indicates that unnamed agents caused Joseph to be rushed out, rather than Joseph acting on his own.
• bor ("pit", H0953A) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha ("the"), referring back to the confinement mentioned earlier in the Joseph narrative.
• yegallach ("he shaved", H1548) — piel (intensive) stem, 3rd masculine singular, with no explicit subject noun or object suffix in this clause; grammatically the subject could be read as Joseph himself or as an unspecified "he/one."
• yechallef ("he changed", H2498) — piel stem, 3rd masculine singular, paired with simlotav ("his clothes", H8071), a feminine plural construct noun with a pronominal suffix "his."
• simlotay / simlotav ("clothes", H8071) — construct plural noun bound to the following possessive suffix, literally "clothes of-his."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of narrative vav-prefixed verbs (va-yishlach, va-yiqra, va-yaritzuhu, va-yegallach, va-yechallef, va-yavo), each meaning "and then he/they did X," producing a rapid sequence of actions with no subordinate clauses. This chaining gives the verse a brisk, almost cinematic pace: Pharaoh sends, summons, Joseph is rushed out, shaved, changed, and brought in — six actions in one sentence.

A grammatical ambiguity appears in the verbs yegallach ("he shaved") and yechallef ("he changed"), both 3rd masculine singular piel forms without an explicit subject noun. The Hebrew does not specify whether Joseph performs these actions himself or whether an unnamed agent (continuing from the plural "they" of yaritzuhu) does them to him. The piel stem itself does not resolve subject identity; it only marks the action as intensive/causative-transitive in force compared to a simple qal.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew singular verbs yegallach ("he shaved") and yechallef ("he changed") are rendered in the LXX with plural verbs ἐξύρησαν ("they shaved") and ἤλλαξαν ("they changed"), explicitly assigning the action to unnamed agents rather than to Joseph. The Vulgate similarly uses the plural totonderunt ("they shaved") but shifts "changed clothes" into a passive/ablative construction, veste mutata ("with clothing having been changed"), removing a specific subject altogether. The Hebrew bor ("pit") is rendered in the LXX as ὀχυρώματος ("stronghold/fortress"), a different image from "pit," while the Vulgate uses carcere ("prison"), closer to a place of confinement than a literal pit.