Genesis 43:24

Summary

The verse describes the steward ("the man") bringing Joseph's brothers into his house, providing water for washing feet, and giving fodder to their donkeys. The Hebrew narrates four sequential actions using the standard narrative chain form.

Key words

• va-yaVe ("and he brought", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) narrative form: the subject caused the men to enter, not merely that they entered themselves.
• ha-'Ish ("the man", H0376G) — definite singular noun referring back to the steward introduced earlier in the chapter; the definite article marks him as already known to the reader.
• Beita Yosef ("house of Joseph", H1004B + H3130G) — construct noun + directional he (H9011) suffix, literally "house-ward of Joseph," indicating motion toward/into that location.
• ragLeihem ("their feet", H7272 + H9028) — feminine dual noun with 3rd person masculine plural suffix; the dual form specifically marks the pair of feet per person, and the suffix distributes possession across "the men."
• chaMorei-hem ("their donkeys", H2543 + H9028) — construct plural noun with pronominal suffix, parallel in structure to ragleihem, showing the text's symmetry between caring for the men and caring for their animals.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four wayyiqtol (narrative) verbs — vayyave ("he brought"), vayyiten ("he gave," first instance, with water), vayyirchatsu ("they washed"), and vayyiten ("he gave," second instance, with fodder) — each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), producing a rapid sequence of consecutive actions typical of Hebrew narrative prose. The subject shifts silently within the sequence: the steward (ha'ish) performs the bringing and both instances of giving, while the brothers themselves are the implied subject of vayyirchatsu ("they washed"), since the verb is 3rd person plural and refers back to ha'anashim ("the men," H0582). The Hebrew text does not explicitly state who washes the feet — it only says water was given and then the men washed, whereas the hiphil form of vayyave clearly marks the steward as the causative agent of bringing them into the house. The construct chain beita Yosef with the directional he suffix reinforces movement into a specific spatial destination rather than mere location.

Differences between versions

The LXX omits any equivalent for "he brought the men into the house of Joseph" as a separate clause with an explicit subject noun; it begins directly with "he brought water" (ἤνεγκεν ὕδωρ), compressing the Hebrew's first action into the same verb used for the second. The Vulgate's introductis domum ("having been led into the house") uses a passive/impersonal construction, not explicitly naming "the man" (ha'ish) as the subject, differing from the Hebrew's clear causative verb form with a named grammatical subject.