Genesis 42:17

Summary

The verse reports that Joseph (the implicit subject from the surrounding narrative) gathered/confined "them" — his brothers — into custody for a period of three days. The sentence is short and purely narrative, advancing the plot with a single action and a time notice.

Key words

• va-yye'esof ("and he removed/gathered", H0622) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking sequential action ("and then he did X"); the qal stem indicates a simple, direct act without added nuance of causation.
• 'otam ("them", H0853 + H9038) — the direct object marker 'et fused with the 3rd person masculine plural suffix, explicitly marking the brothers as the ones acted upon.
• mishmar ("custody", H4929) — masculine singular noun denoting a place or state of guarding/confinement, the destination of the action introduced by 'el ("to", H0413).
• shelloshet ("three", H7969) — cardinal number in construct form, meaning it grammatically binds to the following noun ("three of...") rather than standing alone.
• yamim ("days", H3117) — masculine plural noun, completing the construct phrase "three of days" = "three days."

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative vav attached to yye'esof, a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for moving the story forward in sequence: "and he gathered/removed." The verb's qal stem presents the action as a straightforward, unmarked act — the text does not specify manner or intensity, only that the action occurred. The object of this action, "them," is marked explicitly by the particle 'et combined with the pronominal suffix, a standard way in Hebrew to flag the direct object when it is a pronoun rather than a full noun.

The destination or result of the action is given by the prepositional phrase 'el mishmar, "to custody," using the preposition 'el ("to") to indicate movement or placement into a state of confinement. The final phrase, shelloshet yamim, is a construct chain: the cardinal number shelloshet ("three of") stands in construct relationship with yamim ("days"), a typical Hebrew way of expressing "three days" without needing an explicit conjunction or additional grammatical marker — the two words are bound tightly together to form the single time expression.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the verb with ἔθετο ("he put/placed") and specifies location with ἐν φυλακῇ ("in prison"), a slightly more concrete spatial image than the Hebrew 'el mishmar ("to custody"), which uses "to" rather than "in." The Vulgate's tradidit ("he handed over/delivered") frames the action as a transfer or delivery into custody, differing in emphasis from the Hebrew's more neutral "he gathered/removed." The English and Spanish translations (BSB "imprisoned," RV1909/SBLIBRE "metió en la cárcel") likewise interpret mishmar concretely as "prison" or "cárcel," a specification not explicit in the Hebrew noun itself, which denotes "custody" or "guard" more broadly.