Genesis 42:6

Summary

The verse establishes Joseph's status in Egypt as ruler and grain administrator before narrating the arrival of his brothers, who bow before him with their faces to the ground. The sentence structure uses two parallel nominal clauses to emphasize Joseph's identity before shifting to narrative action verbs.

Key words

• hu' ("he", H1931) — personal pronoun repeated twice, each time before a definite-article predicate, creating an emphatic identifying structure ("he — the ruler... he — the one selling").
• sha.Lit ("ruler", H7989) — adjective functioning as a substantive predicate, marking Joseph's administrative role over the land.
• mash.Bir ("[one who] sold grain", H7666) — hiphil participle, a causative form indicating Joseph as the agent who causes grain to be sold/distributed, not merely a passive seller.
• yish.ta.cha.vu ("they bowed down", H7812) — hishtaphel narrative verb, marking a sequential past action in the story chain, describing physical prostration.
• 'a.Pa.yim ("face", H0639I) — dual noun form, referring to both sides/planes of the face, used idiomatically with prostration.

What the text says

The verse opens with two parallel clauses built on the same pattern: pronoun hu' ("he", H1931) + noun with definite article. First: hu' ha-shallit 'al ha-'aretz ("he [was] the ruler over the land"), then hu' ha-mashbir le-khol 'am ha-'aretz ("he [was] the one selling grain to all the people of the land"). This doubled construction with repeated hu' creates emphasis on identity — establishing who Joseph is before the narrative resumes. The verb mash.Bir is a hiphil participle, meaning Joseph is grammatically presented as the causative agent of the grain distribution, not simply someone in the marketplace.

After this identifying pause, the narrative vav construction resumes the story: va-yavo'u ("and they came", H0935G) followed by va-yishtachavu ("and they bowed down", H7812), both narrative forms that advance the sequence of events. The phrase le-khol 'am ha-'aretz uses construct chains (khol...'am...ha-'aretz) meaning "to all the people of the land," specifying the scope of Joseph's grain distribution. The final phrase appayim artzah combines the dual noun 'a.Pa.yim ("face", H0639I) with 'A.re.tza ("the ground", H0776H) plus a directional he suffix (H9011), literally "faces toward the ground," describing the physical posture of the bow.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha-mashbir ("the one selling grain", H7666) simply as ἐπώλει ("he sold"), omitting the causative/distributive nuance carried by the hiphil form in Hebrew. The Vulgate expands this into "ad ejus nutum frumenta populis vendebantur" ("at his command grain was sold to the peoples"), making explicit the causative agency that the Hebrew hiphil participle implies grammatically. The Vulgate also specifies "in terra Ægypti" ("in the land of Egypt"), an addition not present in the Hebrew ha-'aretz ("the land", H0776G), which simply says "the land" without naming Egypt at this point in the verse.