Genesis 42:14

Summary

Joseph responds to his brothers by reasserting his earlier accusation: he uses a demonstrative-relative construction to point back to what he had "said" (H1696G) previously, then repeats the accusation itself — that they are, using a participle, "spying" or "acting as spies" (H7270).

Key words

• hu ("it/he", H1931) — independent personal pronoun functioning demonstratively, pointing back to the previous statement Joseph made; combined with asher it forms "it is that which..."
• asher ("which/that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that specifies what hu refers to.
• dibbarti ("I said/spoke", H1696G) — piel (intensive stem) perfect, 1st person singular; the perfect aspect marks the speaking as a completed prior event, and the piel stem carries a more forceful or repeated nuance than the simple qal.
• meraggelim ("spies", H7270) — piel participle, masculine plural; grammatically not a fixed noun but a participle describing ongoing or characteristic action ("those who spy/reconnoiter"), used here as the predicate.
• attem ("you", H0859D) — independent personal pronoun, 2nd person masculine plural, serving as the subject of the nominal clause "you [are] spies."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), a wayyiqtol form that continues the story's sequence of events. The core of Joseph's reply is built on the phrase hu asher dibbarti — literally "it [is] that which I said." Here hu (H1931) acts as a resumptive or demonstrative pronoun, anchoring the sentence to Joseph's prior statement, while asher (H0834A) introduces the relative clause specifying that content. The verb dibbarti (H1696G) is in the piel stem, perfect aspect: the perfect places the speaking act in completed past time relative to the present moment of accusation, and the piel stem (an intensive/factitive binyan) gives the verb a heavier rhetorical weight than a simple qal "to say" would carry.

The accusation itself is repeated as a nominal clause: meraggelim attem ("spies [are] you"). Because meraggelim (H7270) is a piel participle rather than a static noun, the Hebrew frames the accusation as describing an ongoing or characteristic activity — "acting as spies" — rather than simply assigning a fixed identity. The clause has no explicit copula ("to be"); the participle and the pronoun attem (H0859D) are juxtaposed directly, a common feature of Hebrew nominal sentences.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hu asher as touto estin ho ("this is what"), preserving the demonstrative-relative sense but using a neuter pronoun (touto) rather than the personal hu. The Vulgate condenses the construction to Hoc est... quod ("This is... what"), similarly using a neuter demonstrative. Both versions retain the participial idea in translating meraggelim as "spies" (skopoi / exploratores), though neither preserves the Hebrew's participial (verbal) nuance as distinctly as the source text, since Greek and Latin here use nominal forms for "spies."