Genesis 43:4

Summary

Genesis 43:4 records Judah's conditional proposal to Jacob: if Jacob sends Benjamin with the brothers, they will travel to Egypt and purchase grain. The verse is structured as a protasis (the sending of the brother) followed by an apodosis (the journey and purchase).

Key words

• yesh ("there is/there exists", H3426) — an existential particle, here combined with the pronominal suffix kha ("your") to form yeshkha, literally "there is to you," an idiomatic way of expressing "you are [doing something]" before a participle.
• meshalleach ("sending", H7971G) — a Piel participle, masculine singular. The Piel stem often carries an intensive or causative nuance ("to send off, dispatch"), and the participle form frames the action as an ongoing or intended state rather than a simple future verb.
• 'achinu ("our brother", H0251G) — construct form of "brother" with the suffix "our," identifying the referent of the sending as the brothers' shared sibling.
• neredah ("we will go down", H3381) — first-person plural form of the root for "to descend," glossed here as a future action ("we will go down"), used for movement from Canaan toward Egypt.
• nishberah ("we will buy", H7666) — first-person plural form of the root for "to buy grain," paired with neredah by the conjunction ve- ("and") to form a sequence of two coordinated intended actions.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A), which governs the entire first clause: yeshkha meshalleach 'et-'achinu 'itanu — "if you are sending our brother with us." The construction yesh + suffix + participle is a common Hebrew idiom for expressing an ongoing or intended action tied to a subject, roughly "if you have our brother being sent" rather than a simple future verb form. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) marks 'achinu ("our brother") as the object of the sending, and the phrase 'itanu ("with us", H0854 + suffix) specifies accompaniment.

The apodosis follows without an explicit conjunction linking it to the protasis beyond the conditional structure itself: neredah venishberah lekha 'okhel — "we will go down and we will buy for you food." The two verbs neredah and nishberah are joined by ve- ("and"), presenting the descent to Egypt and the purchase of grain as a single sequential outcome contingent on the brother being sent. The phrase lekha 'okhel ("for you, food") places the beneficiary (Jacob) before the object of purchase, foregrounding the purpose of the trip.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the protasis as "Si ergo vis eum mittere nobiscum" ("if therefore you wish to send him with us"), introducing the verb vis ("you wish"), which is not present in the Hebrew yeshkha meshalleach construction; the Hebrew expresses the condition through the existential-participle idiom rather than a verb of desire. The Vulgate also uses the pronoun eum ("him") instead of repeating "brother," where both the Hebrew ('achinu) and the LXX (τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν) explicitly restate "our brother." The LXX's εἰ μὲν οὖν ἀποστέλλεις ("if then you are sending") more closely mirrors the Hebrew participial structure than the Vulgate's volitional phrasing.