Genesis 41:39

Summary

Pharaoh addresses Joseph directly, declaring that because God has made known to him "all this" (the interpretation of the dreams and the plan that followed), no one is as discerning and wise as Joseph. The verse is Pharaoh's spoken evaluation, introduced by the standard narrative formula "and he said."

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal verb in narrative form, marking the sequential action that moves the story forward: Pharaoh's speech act.
• hodia' ("has made known", H3045) — hiphil (causative) infinitive construct after acharei ("after"), indicating causation: it is God who caused the knowledge to reach Joseph, not Joseph who acquired it independently.
• Elohim ("God", H0430) — grammatically plural noun functioning here as the subject of the causative verb, the agent behind Joseph's knowledge.
• navon ("discerning one", H0995) — niphal participle, a passive/reflexive verbal form used substantively ("one who is discerning"), paired with the adjective chakham.
• chakham ("wise", H2450) — adjective, joined to navon by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002), forming a double description of Joseph's quality.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav construction va-yomer... Par'oh ("and Pharaoh said"), the standard way Biblical Hebrew introduces reported speech within a sequence of events. The content of Pharaoh's statement is built around a temporal clause introduced by acharei ("after", construct form), followed by the infinitive hodia' ("to make known"). This construction subordinates the entire first clause to a cause: the making-known by Elohim is presented as the reason for what follows, not merely as background information.

The object of that knowledge is marked twice with the untranslated direct object markers 'otkha ("you", H0853 + suffix) and 'et kol zot ("all this", H0853), showing that both Joseph himself (as recipient) and the content ("all this") are grammatically marked as objects of the causative verb hodia'.

The second half of the verse states Pharaoh's conclusion using a negated existential construction: ein navon ve-chakham kamokha ("there is no discerning-one and wise-one like you"). The word navon is a niphal participle — a form that in Hebrew often carries a passive or reflexive nuance ("one who has been made to discern" or "one who discerns"), distinct grammatically from the simple adjective chakham ("wise") that follows it. The comparative kamokha ("like you") closes the clause, anchoring the superlative-like statement to Joseph specifically.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew causative construction acharei hodia' Elohim ("after God made known") with epeidē edeixen ho theos ("since God showed"), using a causal conjunction rather than reproducing the temporal/infinitive structure of the Hebrew. The Vulgate similarly uses Quia ostendit ("because he showed"), and adds interpretive material not present in the Hebrew clause structure, phrasing Pharaoh's closing words as a question ("numquid... invenire potero?" — "shall I be able to find...?") rather than the flat declarative negation ein navon ve-chakham kamokha found in the Hebrew.