Genesis 43:2

Summary

The verse narrates a transition: after Jacob's sons finished eating the grain brought from Egypt, their father instructed them to return there and buy more food. The Hebrew marks this as a new narrative sequence following a time clause introduced by ka'asher ("when", H0834D).

Key words

• ki-Llu ("they finished", H3615J) — piel perfect, third person plural; the piel stem here signals a completed, intensive action of "finishing" rather than a simple ongoing process.
• le-'eKhol ("to eat", H0398) — qal infinitive with prefixed preposition le (H9005), forming a purpose/complement clause: "finished [with regard] to eating."
• heVi'u ("they had brought", H0935P) — hiphil perfect, third person plural; the hiphil (causative) stem conveys that the grain was caused to come, i.e., "brought," distinguishing it from a simple verb of motion.
• Shuvu ("go back", H7725J) and shivru ("buy", H7666) — both qal imperatives, second person masculine plural, giving Jacob's direct command as two paired instructions.
• 'aviHem ("their father", H0001G construct + H9028 suffix) — a construct noun with pronominal suffix, literally "father-of-them," identifying Jacob's relation to "them" (the sons) syntactically rather than by name.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yHi ("and it was", H1961) followed by a temporal clause built on ka'asher ("when/just as", H0834D) plus the piel perfect ki-Llu ("they finished"). The infinitive le-'eKhol ("to eat") completes this verb, and the object is marked by 'et (H0853, untranslated) before ha-Shever ("the grain", H7668), itself further specified by a relative clause: 'asher heVi'u mi-Mitzrayim ("which they had brought from Egypt"). This creates a layered temporal setup before the main narrative verb.

The main action begins with va-yYomer ("and he said", H0559), introducing direct speech. The subject is delayed to the end of the clause — 'aviHem ("their father") — a common Hebrew word order where the verb precedes its subject in narrative sequences. The speech itself consists of two paired qal imperatives, Shuvu ("go back") and shivru ("buy"), followed by lanu ("for us", H9005+H9035) and the construct phrase me'at-'okhel ("a little of food", H4592+H0400), where me'at functions as a construct noun meaning "a small amount of."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha-Shever ("the grain", H7668) as "τὸν σῖτον" (the wheat/grain), consistent with the Hebrew, but translates the imperative pair differently: it uses "πορευθέντες πρίασθε" ("having gone, buy"), a participial construction rather than two coordinated imperatives as in the Hebrew Shuvu shivru. The Vulgate similarly uses "Revertimini, et emite" ("return, and buy"), preserving the two-command structure of the Hebrew. Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) render me'at-'okhel variably as "a little more food," "un poco de alimento," or "un poco más de comida," where "more" reflects contextual inference not explicitly present in the Hebrew construct phrase me'at-'okhel ("a little of food").