Genesis 41:36

Summary

The verse describes the fate of the stored grain: it will function as a reserve for the land during the seven years of famine that are to come upon Egypt, so that the land will not be destroyed by that famine. The sentence uses two sequential verb forms to move from the establishment of the reserve to its future protective effect.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it will become", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, opening the clause and continuing the narrative sequence begun in the preceding verses; here it indicates a future state resulting from prior instructions.
• fiqqadon ("a store", H6487) — masculine singular noun, the predicate complement telling what the food ('okhel, H0400) is meant to become.
• shenei ("years of", H8141) — masculine plural construct form, linking directly to ha.ra'av ("the famine", H7458) to form the phrase "years of the famine."
• tihyeyna ("they will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, third person feminine plural, agreeing with the feminine plural noun "years" (shanim) implied by shenei; it opens the relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which", H0834A).
• tikkaret ("it will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal imperfect, passive voice, third person feminine singular, agreeing with ha'arets ("the land", H0776G); the niphal stem marks the land as the entity acted upon by the famine, not the actor.

What the text says

The clause opens with the sequential ve-hayah, which carries the narrative forward from the preceding plan (storing grain during years of plenty) to its stated purpose. The subject "the food" (ha'okhel) is placed into the role of "a store" (le-fiqqadon) "for the land" (la'arets), establishing a straightforward equivalence: food = future reserve. The phrase le-sheva' shenei ha-ra'av ("for the seven years of the famine") uses a construct chain to tie the number seven to "years," and "years" to "the famine," producing a compact temporal marker without any separate verb of duration.

The relative clause 'asher tihyeyna be'erets Mitsrayim ("which will be in the land of Egypt") uses the feminine plural imperfect tihyeyna, matching the grammatical gender and number of "years," to state that these years will occur specifically in Egypt. The final clause, ve-lo tikkaret ha'arets ba-ra'av ("and the land will not be cut off by the famine"), employs the niphal stem of karat ("to cut off"), which frames the land as the passive recipient of the famine's effect rather than naming an agent explicitly — the famine itself, introduced with the preposition be- ("by/in"), functions as the means of the cutting-off.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha'okhel ("the food," singular) as τὰ βρώματα, a plural "the foods," and translates le-fiqqadon ("into a store") with πεφυλαγμένα, "having been guarded/kept," shifting from a noun of storage to a passive participle of guarding. Where the Hebrew has tikkaret ("cut off"), the LXX uses ἐκτριβήσεται ("will be wiped out/destroyed"), a different verb of destruction. The Vulgate restructures the clause with an imperative-subjunctive præparetur ("let it be prepared"), which introduces a directive nuance not present in the Hebrew's simple sequential future ve-hayah. The SBLIBRE Spanish version adds "para que" ("so that"), an explicit purpose marker not present in the Hebrew, which links the reserve to the land's survival without a subordinating conjunction.