Genesis 43:9

Summary

Judah offers himself as guarantor for Benjamin before Jacob, using a legal formula: he pledges personal responsibility, specifies that Jacob may hold him accountable, and states the consequence of failure — permanent guilt before his father.

Key words

• 'e'erveNnu ("I will stand surety for", H6148) — qal imperfect, first person: a verb of pledging or guaranteeing, with the object suffix "him" (nu, H9033) referring to Benjamin. It frames the whole statement as a formal pledge rather than a simple promise.
• tevakSheNnu ("you will require him", H1245) — piel imperfect, second masculine singular: the intensive stem signals a formal demand/accounting, placing the responsibility of enforcement on Jacob ("from my hand", miYyaDi, H3027G + H9020).
• haviTiv ("I have brought him", H0935P) — hiphil perfect, causative, first person: expresses the completed act of "causing to come," here used inside a conditional clause ("if I have not brought him").
• hitzagTiv ("I will set him", H3322) — hiphil sequential perfect, continuing the conditional chain begun by haviTiv; the sequential form (vav + perfect) shows this action follows logically/temporally from the first.
• chaTati ("I will be culpable", H2398) — qal sequential perfect, first person: names the state of guilt/liability that results if the conditions are not met, closing the oath formula with kol-haYamim ("all the days", H3605 + H9009 + H3117K).

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional oath. Judah opens with the independent pronoun 'anoKhi ("I", H0595) followed by 'e'erveNnu, emphasizing that he personally — not someone else — takes on the surety. The next clause, miYyaDi tevakSheNnu, places the burden of demanding accountability explicitly on Jacob: "from my hand you will require him," using the piel stem of baqash to intensify the sense of a formal claim.

The conditional structure 'im lo' ("if not", H0518A + H3808) introduces two verbs in perfect tense chained by the narrative vav: haviTiv ("I have brought him") and hitzagTiv ("I will set him"), both hiphil causatives referring to Judah's action of returning and presenting Benjamin safely. The consequence clause, also introduced by vav, uses chaTati ("I will be culpable") — a qal perfect describing the resulting state of guilt, extended by kol-haYamim ("all the days"), indicating permanence rather than a single instance of failure.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chaTati ("I will be culpable", H2398) with the perfect participle construction ἡμαρτηκὼς ἔσομαι ("I will have sinned"), shifting the emphasis toward a completed state of sin rather than the Hebrew's more juridical notion of culpability/liability. The Vulgate's peccati reus ("guilty of sin") similarly frames the outcome in terms of sin-guilt, while the Hebrew chaTati itself carries a broader semantic range covering both moral fault and legal liability. The Vulgate also adds puerum ("the boy") as the object of suscipio, specifying what is implicit in the Hebrew suffix -nu ("him", H9033).