Genesis 43:8

Summary

Judah addresses his father Israel, urging him to send Benjamin ("the young man") with the brothers so they can travel to Egypt for provisions. He frames the journey as a matter of survival for the whole family — using a triple repetition of "also" to stress that everyone's life, including the children's, depends on it.

Key words

• shilChah ("send", H7971) — qal imperative with a paragogic he ending, which intensifies the command, giving it the force of an urgent plea rather than a flat instruction.
• na'ar ("young man", H5288) — definite (marked by ha, H9009), referring to a specific known individual, here understood as Benjamin.
• naKumah ("let us arise", H6965) and neLekhah ("we will go", H1980) — both first-person plural forms joined by ve ("and", H9002), presenting the departure as a joint, immediate action ("let us get up and go").
• nichYeh ("we may live", H2421) — imperfect form linked by ve to the preceding verbs, expressing the purpose or result of the journey: survival.
• gam ("also/as well as", H1571) — repeated three times (before 'aNachnu "we", 'aTah "you", and tapPenu "our little ones"), structurally binding speaker, father, and children into a single group whose fate is shared.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yYomer ("and he said", H0559) introducing direct speech from Yehudah (H3063G) to Yisra'El 'aVi ("Israel his father", H3478 + H0001G with suffix H9023). The core request is compact: shilChah ha-na'ar 'itTi — "send the young man with me" — using the emphatic imperative form noted above. This is followed by a chain of four verbs connected by ve: naKumah, neLekhah, nichYeh, ve-lo' naMut ("and let us arise, and let us go, and we may live, and we will not die"). The chaining creates a cause-and-effect sequence in Hebrew without needing explicit connectors like "so that" — the grammar itself carries the logical progression from action (going) to outcome (living, not dying).

The closing clause uses gam three times to enumerate who is included in this shared fate: gam-'aNachnu, gam-'aTah, gam-tapPenu ("both we, and you, and our little ones"). The repetition is a rhetorical device that binds Judah, Jacob, and the children (tapPenu, H2945, construct form with suffix "our") into one collective subject of the verbs "live" and "die."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shilChah ha-na'ar 'itTi as a past-tense clause ("Ap' host' heilon to paidarion met' emou"), differing structurally from the Hebrew imperative-plus-request form. The Vulgate's Mitte puerum mecum preserves the imperative sense closer to the Hebrew. Where the Hebrew ends with gam-tapPenu ("also our little ones"), the LXX has hē aposkeuē hēmōn ("our baggage/possessions"), a notably different referent than the Hebrew's "children."