Genesis 43:32

Summary

The verse describes how food was served at Joseph's meal: separately for Joseph himself, separately for his brothers, and separately for the Egyptians eating with him. The text then explains this arrangement with a causal clause: the Egyptians could not eat bread with the Hebrews, because doing so was an abomination to Egypt.

Key words

• levaddo (from bad, "only/alone", H0905H) — construct noun with 3rd person masculine singular suffix, "his alone"; repeated three times (for Joseph, for the brothers, for the Egyptians) to mark three distinct, separated groups at the meal.
• yukhelun ("they were able", H3201) — qal imperfect with paragogic nun (H9013), a suffix that adds emphasis to the verb form without changing its basic meaning.
• ki ("for/that", H3588A) — appears twice in the verse, introducing first the reason the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews, then the reason for that reason (the abomination).
• to'evah ("abomination", H8441) — feminine singular noun, the predicate describing what the mixed eating represents "to Egypt" (le-Mitzrayim, H4713).
• ha'okhelim ("the ones eating", H0398) — qal participle, masculine plural, describing the Egyptians as those "eating with him" (ito, H0854 + suffix), distinguishing their group from Joseph and the brothers.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb va-yasimu ("and they set/placed", H7760H), followed by three parallel prepositional phrases built on le- ("to/for") plus bad ("alone") with pronominal suffixes: lo levaddo ("for him, for him alone"), ve-lahem levaddam ("and for them, for them alone"), and ve-la-mitzrim ha-okhelim ito levaddam ("and for the Egyptians who were eating with him, for them alone"). This triple repetition of bad with different suffixes structurally separates the three parties at the table without needing additional vocabulary — the doubling of the pronoun and the "alone" root within each phrase is itself what conveys the separation.

The second half of the verse gives the reason using two successive ki clauses. The first ki introduces lo yukhelun ha-mitzrim le'ekhol et-ha'ivrim lechem ("the Egyptians were not able to eat bread with the Hebrews"), where yukhelun carries the paragogic nun adding rhetorical weight to the statement of inability. The second ki introduces the underlying cause: ki-to'evah hi le-mitzrayim ("for it is an abomination to Egypt"), where the feminine pronoun hi (H1931) refers back to the act of shared eating just described.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final clause as "βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις πᾶς ποιμὴν προβάτων" ("for every shepherd of sheep is an abomination to the Egyptians"), introducing the phrase "shepherd of sheep," which has no corresponding word in the Hebrew text given, where the abomination (to'evah) is tied to the shared meal (hi, referring back to the eating together), not to shepherding. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure more closely, rendering the threefold separation (seorsum Joseph... seorsum fratribus... seorsum) and noting the practice as illicitum ("unlawful") and profanum ("profane"), terms not present as such in the Hebrew, which uses only to'evah ("abomination").