Genesis 43:3

Summary

Judah tells Jacob that "the man" (Joseph, unrecognized) had solemnly warned them: they will not see his face again unless their brother is with them. The verse reports Judah's speech introducing the condition set by the Egyptian official during the brothers' previous visit.

Key words

• ha'ed he'id ("certainly he warned", H5749B) — an infinitive absolute followed by a perfect verb, both hiphil (causative) of the same root; this doubling intensifies the verb, marking the warning as emphatic or solemn, a construction that a single verb in translation cannot fully replicate.
• tir'u ("you will see", H7200G) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, expressing a future or ongoing action ("you will [not] see"), governed by the negation lo' ("not", H3808).
• panai ("my face", H6440H) — masculine plural noun in construct form with the 1st person suffix -i ("my"); Hebrew uses the plural form panim even when referring to a single face, a grammatical feature not visible in translation.
• bilti ("except", H1115) — a noun functioning as a conjunction introducing the exception clause, syntactically joining the negated main clause to the condition about the brother.
• achikhem ("your brother", H0251G) — masculine singular noun in construct with the suffix -khem ("your", plural), referring to the brother who must accompany them.

What the text says

The sentence begins with the narrative chain va-yomer... leymor ("and he said... saying", H0559 twice), a common Hebrew framing device introducing direct speech, here doubled because Judah is quoting the man's earlier words within his own speech to Jacob. The core of the man's warning is built on the infinitive absolute + perfect construction ha'ed he'id ("he certainly warned", H5749B), which in Biblical Hebrew grammar emphasizes the certainty or seriousness of the action — a nuance often lost when rendered simply as "warned" or "solemnly warned" in translation.

The condition itself is structured as a negative clause followed by an exception: lo' tir'u fanai bilti achikhem itkhem ("you will not see my face except your brother is with you"). The noun panai ("my face", H6440H) is grammatically plural, though it denotes a single face — a standard feature of this noun in Hebrew, not a plural face. The exception is marked by bilti (H1115), which functions here as "unless/except," linking the impossibility of seeing the face to the presence of the brother, expressed through the construct pair achikhem... itkhem ("your brother... with you").

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text says only achikhem ("your brother", H0251G) without qualification. The LXX adds "ὁ νεώτερος" ("the younger") and the Vulgate adds "minimum" ("the youngest"), both specifying an age detail absent from the Hebrew wording of this verse. Additionally, where the Hebrew uses the exception marker bilti ("except"), the LXX renders it with a conditional clause "ἐὰν μὴ" ("if not"), and the Vulgate uses "nisi... adduxeritis" ("unless you bring"), both making explicit an action (bringing the brother) that the Hebrew leaves implicit in the phrase "with you."