Genesis 41:49
וַיִּצְבֹּר יוֹסֵף בָּר כְּחוֹל הַיָּם הַרְבֵּה מְאֹד עַד כִּי־חָדַל לִסְפֹּר כִּי־אֵין מִסְפָּֽר׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיִּצְבֹּ֨ר יוֹסֵ֥ף בָּ֛ר כְּח֥וֹל הַיָּ֖ם הַרְבֵּ֣ה מְאֹ֑ד עַ֛ד כִּי־חָדַ֥ל לִסְפֹּ֖ר כִּי־אֵ֥ין מִסְפָּֽר׃
καὶ συνήγηεν ἸωσὴΦ σῖτον ὡσεὶ τὴν ἄμμον τῆς θαλάσσης πολὺ σφόδρα, ἕως οὐκ ἠδύνατο ἀριθμῆσαι· οὐ γὰρ ἢν ἀριθμός.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Tantaque fuit abundantia tritici, ut arenæ maris coæquaretur, et copia mensuram excederet.
Fue tanto el trigo que José almacenó, que parecía la arena del mar; era tanto que hasta dejó de contarlo o llevar un registro.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y acopió José trigo como arena de la mar, mucho en extremo, hasta no poderse contar, porque no tenía número.
So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance, like the sand of the sea, that he stopped keeping track of it; for it was beyond measure.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse describes Joseph storing grain in such enormous quantity, compared to the sand of the sea, that he eventually stopped counting it — the amount had become uncountable.
Key words
- yitzBor ("he stored up", H6651) — Qal narrative verb, continuing the sequence of the story; indicates the completed act of accumulating.
- bar ("grain", H1250A) — masculine singular noun, the direct object of the storing.
- chol ("sand of", H2344) — construct form ("sand of..."), linking to hayYam ("the sea", H3220G) to form the comparison "sand of the sea."
- harBeh ("much", H7235A) — Hiphil absolute infinitive, used adverbially to intensify the preceding action ("very much/abundantly").
- chaDal ("he ceased", H2308) — Qal perfect, marking a completed action: Joseph "ceased" or "stopped" the act described next.
What the text says
The clause opens with the narrative construction va-yitzBor, "and he stored up," continuing the sequential storyline typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative. The subject yoSef ("Joseph", H3130G) performs the action on the object bar ("grain", H1250A). The comparison is built through the preposition ke ("like", H9004) attached to the construct chain chol ha-Yam ("sand of the sea"), a fixed idiomatic image for something innumerable.
The intensifier harBeh me'Od ("much, very") — grammatically an absolute infinitive followed by an adverb — pushes the description to an extreme degree, marking the grain's quantity as extraordinary rather than merely large.
The second half of the verse is built on two parallel clauses introduced by ki ("that/because", H3588A): first, ki-chaDal liSpor ("that he ceased to count/measure"), using the infinitive liSpor ("to measure", H5608A) dependent on the perfect verb chaDal; second, ki-'ein misPar ("for there was no number"), where 'ein ("there is not", H0369) negates the existence of misPar ("number/measure", H4557). The repetition of ki creates a cause-and-result structure: the grain was so abundant that counting ceased, because no number could describe it.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders chaDal liSpor ("he ceased to measure") as "οὐκ ἠδύνατο ἀριθμῆσαι" ("he was not able to count"), shifting from an act of ceasing to an inability, a nuance not present in the Hebrew chaDal ("he ceased", H2308). The Vulgate similarly reads "copia mensuram excederet" ("the abundance exceeded measure"), framing the idea abstractly rather than describing Joseph's action of stopping the count, as the Hebrew verb form does.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.