Genesis 43:31

Summary

Genesis 43:31 narrates four consecutive actions of a single subject: washing his face, going out, restraining himself, and giving a command to serve food. The verse uses a chain of narrative verb forms typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling, moving the action forward step by step.

Key words

• va-yirchatz ("and he washed", H7364) — qal narrative form; the initial vav plus prefixed verb pattern signals sequential action ("and then he washed").
• panav ("his face", H6440H) — masculine plural noun in construct with a pronominal suffix ("his"); Hebrew treats "face" as grammatically plural though referring to a single face.
• va-yeitzei ("and he came out", H3318G) — qal narrative, continuing the sequence of actions with the same unnamed subject.
• va-yit'apaq ("and he restrained himself", H0662) — hithpael narrative form; the hithpael stem marks reflexive or self-directed action, here "he restrained/controlled himself."
• simu ("set/serve", H7760H) — qal imperative, plural "you," a direct command addressed to more than one person.

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on the narrative vav construction (va- + prefixed verb), a chain of four such forms — va-yirchatz, va-yeitzei, va-yit'apaq, va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — that presents the actions as a tight sequence, each event following directly from the last. The subject of these verbs is not named within the verse itself; the third-person masculine singular verb forms carry the subject implicitly, continuing from what precedes in the narrative.

The word panav ("his face", H6440H) shows the grammatical peculiarity of Hebrew, where "face" is always morphologically plural (H6440H marks this plural construct form) even when referring to one person's face — this is a feature of the noun's paradigm, not an indication of multiple faces.

The hithpael verb yit'apaq ("he restrained himself", H0662) stands out grammatically among the sequence: while the surrounding verbs (yirchatz, yeitzei, yomer) are simple qal actions, this one uses the hithpael stem, which in Hebrew grammar often marks a reflexive or internally-directed action — the subject doing something to or for himself, in this case controlling his own emotional state before speaking.

The final clause shifts from narrative report to direct speech: simu lachem ("set food", H7760H + H3899G) is a qal plural imperative, a command issued to multiple addressees, closing the verse with reported speech rather than further narrative action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence with a participial construction (νιψάμενος... ἐξελθὼν ἐνεκρατεύσατο, "having washed... having gone out, he restrained himself") rather than the paratactic chain of independent verbs found in the Hebrew, subordinating the first two actions to the third. The Vulgate similarly uses ablative absolute participles (lota facie egressus) before the main verb continuit se, producing a hierarchical Latin sentence structure where Hebrew has a flat sequence of equally-weighted narrative verbs.