Genesis 41:35

Summary

The verse continues Joseph's proposal: officials are to gather all the food produced during the coming good years, store grain under Pharaoh's authority, and keep it as a reserve in the cities. The sentence is built as a chain of three verbal actions describing a single administrative plan.

Key words

• yikbetzu ("let them gather", H6908) — qal imperfect with vav, expressing purpose/continuation after the preceding verse's instructions; not a simple future but a directive.
• 'okhel ("food of", H0400) — construct noun opening the phrase kol 'okhel ha-shanim ha-tovot ("all the food of the good years"), a chain of nouns in construct relation building a single complex object.
• ha-ba'ot ("that are coming", H0935G) — qal participle feminine plural, describing the years as still future relative to the moment of speaking, agreeing with shanim ("years", H8141) and tovot ("good", H2896A).
• yad-Par'oh ("hand of Pharaoh", H3027H + H6547H) — construct phrase; yad ("hand") in construct with the proper name marks the storage as placed under Pharaoh's administrative control, not merely his physical hand.
• shamaru ("they will keep", H8104H) — qal sequential perfect (vav + perfect), the third link in the action chain, shifting from imperfect forms to perfect to close the sequence of instructions with a final resulting state ("and it will be kept").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence links three verbal clauses through vav: two imperfects (yikbetzu, yitzberu) followed by a sequential perfect (shamaru). This pattern is typical of instructional or purpose sequences in Biblical Hebrew narrative — the imperfects convey the actions to be undertaken, and the concluding perfect marks the resulting or completed state ("and so it will be kept"), rather than a separate independent event.

The phrase kol 'okhel ha-shanim ha-tovot ha-ba'ot ha-'elleh stacks four modifiers — "years," "good," "that are coming," "these" — around the construct noun 'okhel ("food of"), producing a dense noun phrase: "all the food of these good years that are coming." The participle ha-ba'ot keeps the years grammatically framed as not-yet-arrived at the time of speaking, distinguishing the planning stage from the storage stage described afterward with bar ("grain", H1250A) and 'okhel used again for the food kept "in the cities" (be-'arim, H5892B).

The phrase tachat yad-Par'oh ("under the hand of Pharaoh") uses yad in construct to indicate administrative authority rather than literal handling, placed between the storing of grain and its location in the cities.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence as three imperative clauses (συναγαγέτωσαν, συναχθήτω... twice) rather than the Hebrew's imperfect-imperfect-perfect chain, and separates "under Pharaoh's hand" (ὑπὸ χεῖρα Φαραώ) from the city-storage clause, which the Hebrew joins more tightly. The Vulgate similarly restructures into three clauses (congreget, condatur, serveturque), placing "sub Pharaonis potestate" as modifying the grain's condition rather than following the "gathering" verb as in the Hebrew word order. The BSB moves "under the authority of Pharaoh" to the sentence's opening position, whereas in the Hebrew this phrase occurs after yitzberu ("let them store"), attached specifically to the grain-storing action.