Genesis 41:51

Summary

Joseph names his firstborn son Manasseh, giving an explanation for the name: he states that God has made him forget his hardship and his father's household. The verse links the son's name to a play on words with the verb "to forget."

Key words

• na.Sha ("he has made forget", H5382) — piel perfect, causative and intensive stem: the subject (God) causes the forgetting to happen to Joseph, not a simple act of forgetting.
• ni ("me", H9030) — pronominal suffix attached to the verb, marking Joseph as the one affected by the forgetting.
• 'E.lo.Him ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun functioning as the grammatical subject of the piel verb na.Sha.
• 'a.ma.L ("trouble", H5999) — construct singular noun with the suffix i ("my"), forming "my trouble/hardship."
• beit ("household of", H1004M) — construct noun linking to 'a.V ("father", H0001G) with suffix i, forming "the household of my father."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative verb i.yik.Ra' ("he called", H7121H), marked by the vav that chains it to the preceding narrative sequence. The subject is yo.Sef ("Joseph", H3130G). The direct object marker 'et- (H0853) introduces shem ("[the] name of", H8034), in construct with ha.Be.khor ("the firstborn", H1060) and the proper name me.na.Sheh ("Manasseh", H4519G) — the naming formula "he called the name of the firstborn Manasseh."

The subordinating particle ki- ("for", H3588A) introduces the explanatory clause. The verb na.Sha ("he has made forget", H5382) is in the piel stem, which here carries a causative sense: the subject 'E.lo.Him ("God") is presented as the agent causing Joseph to forget, with the 1st-person suffix ni as the one who forgets. Two objects follow, each introduced by the direct object marker 'et-/'Et: kol-'a.ma.li ("all my trouble") and kol-beit 'a.vi ("all the household of my father"). Both phrases use the construct chain kol + noun + pronominal suffix i, a common Hebrew pattern for expressing possession and totality together. The name me.na.Sheh itself shares the same root letters (נשה) as the verb na.Sha ("he has made forget"), so the explanatory clause functions as a word-play grounding the son's name in the stated action of forgetting.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds λέγων ("saying"), an explicit verb of speech not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew text supplied, though the Hebrew ki- clause functions similarly by introducing direct reported reasoning. The LXX also renders the second object as "all the [things] of my father" (πάντων τῶν τοῦ πατρός μου) without an explicit equivalent to beit ("household of", H1004M), while the Vulgate's domus patris mei ("the house of my father") preserves the household/house sense found in the Hebrous beit.