Genesis 43:30

Summary

The verse narrates Joseph's emotional reaction upon seeing his brother (Benjamin): he hurries away, seeks a place to weep, enters an inner chamber, and weeps there. The Hebrew sentence chains four sequential actions using narrative verb forms, with a causal clause explaining the reason for the first action.

Key words

• y'maher ("he hurried", H4116A) — piel narrative form of the verb, giving an intensive nuance to "hurry," marking the first action in the sequence.
• nikhmeru ("they grew warm/were stirred", H3648) — niphal perfect, a passive/reflexive form describing an internal, involuntary physical-emotional state that has already occurred, introduced by the causal particle ki ("for/because", H3588A).
• rachamav ("his compassion/inward parts", H7356B) — masculine plural noun in construct form, followed by the pronominal suffix v ("his", H9023), literally "his compassions," the grammatical subject of nikhmeru.
• chadrah ("into the inner room", H2315 + H9011) — a common noun combined with the directional he ending, which indicates motion toward the location rather than simple location.
• sham...ah ("there," H8033G + H9011) — adverb with directional he, reinforcing the sense of arrival "to that place," paralleling the directional form on chadrah.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — y'maher ("he hurried"), y'vaqesh ("he sought", H1245), yavo' ("he went", H0935G), and yevekh ("he wept", H1058) — each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), which links the actions sequentially: hurry → seek → enter → weep. Between the first two verbs, a causal clause explains the hurrying: ki nikhmeru rachamav 'el-'achiv ("for his compassions/inward parts grew warm toward his brother"). The noun rachamav is plural in construct with the suffix "his," a Hebrew idiom describing a bodily-emotional stirring, followed by 'el-'achiv ("to/toward his brother", H0413 + H0251G), also in construct with a possessive suffix.

The infinitive livkot ("to weep", H1058) after y'vaqesh ("he sought") expresses purpose — he sought [a place] in order to weep — though no object noun for "place" appears explicitly in the Hebrew; it is implied by the infinitive construction. The directional he suffix on both chadrah ("into the room") and shamah ("to there") marks motion toward a destination, a grammatical feature not distinguishable in English or Spanish translations, which render both simply as static locations ("room," "there").

Differences between versions

The LXX names the subject as "Irós" (Ἰρὸς) where the Hebrew has Yosef ("Joseph", H3130G), and renders nikhmeru rachamav ("his compassions grew warm") as "his entrails were turned/twisted" (συνεστρέφετο τὰ ἔντερα), using a different bodily metaphor for the same emotional stirring. The Vulgate's commota fuerant viscera ("his inward parts were stirred") stays closer to a bodily-emotional idiom similar to the Hebrew. The Vulgate also adds et erumpebant lacrimae ("and tears burst forth") before mentioning the chamber, an addition not present as a separate clause in the Hebrew text, which instead expresses the intent to weep through the infinitive livkot.