Genesis 42:1

Summary

Jacob perceives that grain is available in Egypt and confronts his sons, who are apparently standing idle, with a question about their inaction. The verse sets up the sons' subsequent journey to Egypt during the famine.

Key words

• vayyar ("he saw", H7200H) — qal narrative verb; introduces the action with a simple past "and he saw/perceived," here used in the sense of realizing or learning a fact rather than pure physical sight.
• ki ("that", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing the content of what Jacob perceived: the clause that follows explains what he saw/knew.
• yesh ("there is", H3426) — existential particle asserting the presence of something, here combined with shever to state "there is grain."
• shever ("grain", H7668) — masculine singular noun, the object of the existential statement, naming what is available in Egypt.
• titra'u ("you are looking at one another", H7200G) — hithpael imperfect, second person masculine plural, from the same root as vayyar; the hithpael (reflexive/reciprocal) stem shifts the meaning from simple "seeing" to a mutual or reflexive action, "looking at each other."

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive construction (va-yiqtol), typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling: "and he saw... and he said." The first clause, vayyar Ya'aqov ki yesh shever be-Mitzrayim ("Jacob saw/perceived that there was grain in Egypt"), uses ki to introduce a factual clause rather than a direct object — Jacob's "seeing" here is cognitive, a realization of a fact reported to him, not necessarily direct visual perception.

The second clause introduces direct speech: Jacob addresses banayv ("his sons", from ben, H1121A, with the third-person singular suffix H9023) with the question lammah titra'u. The verb titra'u is grammatically significant because it derives from the identical root (H7200, "to see") used in the opening verb vayyar, but in the hithpael stem. This stem conveys a reflexive or reciprocal nuance — the sons are pictured as "seeing each other" or "looking at one another," implying inaction or mutual staring rather than active response to the news of available grain. The Hebrew text thus creates a root-play: Jacob "sees" (qal) the situation, while his sons merely "look at each other" (hithpael) without acting.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shever ("grain", H7668) with a form related to "πρᾶσις" (a sale/trade context, though the Swete text shows a corrupted "πρᾶαις"), shifting the emphasis toward a transaction rather than the simple presence of grain stated by yesh... shever in the Hebrew. The Vulgate similarly interprets the situation as "alimenta venderentur" ("provisions were being sold"), introducing the notion of sale absent from the Hebrew's plain existential statement "there is grain." For the final question, the LXX's "ῥᾳθυμεῖτε" ("you are being negligent/idle") and the Vulgate's "negligitis" ("you neglect") both interpret titra'u as expressing negligence, whereas the Hebrew verb itself denotes a reciprocal act of "looking at one another," without an explicit lexical component of neglect.