Genesis 42:38

Summary

Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go down to Egypt with his brothers, explaining that Joseph is dead and Benjamin is his only remaining son from Rachel. He states that if harm should befall Benjamin on the journey, his sons would bring his old age down to Sheol in sorrow.

Key words

• yereD ("he will go down", H3381) — qal imperfect, expressing a future/potential action Jacob refuses to permit regarding Benjamin's departure.
• met ("he has died", H4191) — qal participle, functioning as a stative description ("is dead") rather than a narrated past event.
• nish'Ar ("is remaining", H7604) — niphal participle, passive/reflexive form indicating Benjamin's state as "the one left remaining," emphasizing his isolated position after Joseph's presumed death.
• asOn ("harm", H0611) — masculine singular noun, the subject of the verb qera'Ahu ("it will happen to him", H7122I), forming the conditional clause about potential disaster on the road.
• horadTem ("you will cause to go down", H3381) — hiphil sequential perfect, the causative form of the same root as yereD, creating a wordplay: the same verb "to go down" appears first as what Jacob forbids (Benjamin going down) and then as what he fears his sons would cause (his gray hair going down to Sheol).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure moves through a chain of clauses connected by narrative and sequential vav-forms. Jacob's declaration begins with a flat negation, lo'-yereD ("he will not go down"), followed by a causal clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A) that gives the reasoning: achiv met ("his brother has died") and hu levaDo nish'ar ("he alone remains"). The participial forms met and nish'ar present these as ongoing states rather than single past events, framing Joseph's death and Benjamin's isolation as the present condition shaping Jacob's decision.

The second half of the verse shifts into a conditional-consequential structure using sequential perfects (qera'Ahu, horadTem), which continue the logical sequence begun by the relative clause asher telekhu-vah ("which you will go on it"). The repetition of the root yored ("to go down") — first as a simple qal imperfect describing Benjamin's potential journey, then as a hiphil causative describing what the sons would do to Jacob's sei'vaTi ("my gray hair", H7872) — creates a grammatical link between the son's descent and the father's feared descent to she'olah ("toward Sheol", H7585), marked with the directional he suffix.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders asOn ("harm") with the verb malakisthēnai ("to become weak/ill"), narrowing the Hebrew's general term for harm to a specific notion of physical weakness. The Vulgate renders the construction with si quid ei adversi acciderit ("if anything adverse happens to him"), making explicit the conditional sense that the Hebrew conveys through the sequential perfect construction rather than an overt conditional particle.