Genesis 41:28

Summary

The verse restates that the dream interpretation Joseph gave Pharaoh is confirmed: what Joseph told Pharaoh is identical to what God is about to bring about, and God has already revealed this to Pharaoh through the dream.

Key words

• hu' ("that", H1931) — independent personal pronoun used demonstratively, pointing back to the interpretation just given and forward to haddavar.
• dibbarti ("I spoke", H1696G) — piel perfect, first person; the piel stem intensifies the act of speaking, and the perfect marks it as a completed act (Joseph's prior statement to Pharaoh).
• 'oseh ("is about to do", H6213A) — qal participle, masculine singular; participles express ongoing or imminent action, so this frames God's action as something currently unfolding or about to unfold, not yet finished.
• her'ah ("he has shown", H7200G) — hiphil perfect, third person; the hiphil stem is causative, meaning God "caused Pharaoh to see," and the perfect marks this causing-to-see as a completed event (the dream itself).
• 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) — morphologically plural noun but takes a singular verb ('oseh), a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew where this plural form of the noun functions with singular reference.

What the text says

The verse is built on two relative clauses introduced by 'asher ("which", H0834A), each attached to a different verb. The first clause — 'asher dibbarti 'el-Par'oh — modifies haddavar ("the word/matter") and refers back to Joseph's spoken interpretation. The second clause — 'asher ha'Elohim 'oseh — describes what God is doing, and its verb is a participle, giving it a durative or imminent sense distinct from the completed perfects used elsewhere in the verse. The main clause then reports that God "has shown" (her'ah, hiphil perfect) this action to Pharaoh, with 'et (H0853) marking Par'oh as the direct object of the showing. The verse thus chains three verbal ideas — speaking (piel), doing (qal participle), and showing (hiphil) — each with a distinct binyan, layering the report of the interpretation, God's ongoing action, and God's causing Pharaoh to perceive it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first relative clause with ὃ εἴρηκα Φαραώ, using a bare dative-like construction for Φαραώ without an explicit preposition matching Hebrew 'el ("to", H0413), and uses ὃσα ("as much as / whatever") where the Hebrew has 'asher ("which"), broadening the relative sense slightly. The Latin text supplied (VULCLEM) diverges substantially in wording and structure from the Hebrew clauses described above, reading "Qui hoc ordine complebuntur" ("these things will be fulfilled in this order"), which does not correspond word-for-word to the Hebrew's two-clause construction involving dibbarti, 'oseh, and her'ah.