Genesis 44:11

Summary

The verse narrates that the brothers hurried, each man lowered his sack to the ground, and each man opened his sack. The action is presented as a rapid sequence of three coordinated events performed individually by each brother.

Key words

• yəmahărû ("they hurried", H4116A) — piel stem, giving an intensive/emphatic sense of speed; narrative vav marks it as the first event in the sequence.
• yôrîdû ("they brought down", H3381) — hiphil (causative) stem: the brothers caused the sacks to descend, rather than simply "going down" themselves.
• 'ish ("each man", H0376I) — singular noun used distributively; though the verbs are plural (they all acted), 'ish singles out that each individual performed the act on his own sack, not communally.
• 'artzah ("[to the] ground", H0776H) — the noun for "ground/land" carries a directional he (H9011) suffix, meaning "toward the ground," specifying the motion's endpoint.
• yiftəchû ("they opened", H6605A) — qal (simple) stem, plain active verb, contrasting with the causative yôrîdû just before it.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three narrative-vav clauses, each introduced by va- ("and then"), producing a tight sequential rhythm: hurrying → lowering → opening. The verbs yəmahărû, yôrîdû, and yiftəchû are all third-person masculine plural, referring collectively to "the brothers," yet each of the last two clauses adds 'ish ("each man") in apposition to the plural subject. This grammatical choice distributes the plural action across individuals: it is not a single collective act but each brother independently handling his own 'amtachto ("his sack", H0572, construct + suffix H9023), repeated twice as "his sack." The repetition of 'ish ... 'amtachto in both clauses (opening and lowering) reinforces that each man dealt separately with his own container, a detail that a smoothed translation might merge into a single collective image.

The directional he on 'artzah is a small but precise grammatical marker: it does not merely say "on the ground" as a location but "downward, toward the ground," matching the causative force of yôrîdû ("brought down"). The hiphil stem of yôrîdû signals that the sacks did not fall by themselves — the brothers actively caused them to descend.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two initial Hebrew verbs (yəmahărû, "they hurried"; yôrîdû, "they brought down") as ἒσπευσαν καὶ καθεῖλαν ("they hurried and took down"), preserving both actions but using aorist indicatives without the same causative nuance carried by the hiphil. For the final verb, the LXX uses ἤνοιξεν (singular) with ἕκαστος ("each one opened"), shifting the number to singular where the Hebrew retains a plural verb (yiftəchû) paired with the distributive 'ish. The Vulgate compresses the first two Hebrew verbs into a single participial construction, "festinato... deponentes" ("having hurried, setting down"), rather than presenting them as two distinct sequential verbs, and places "singuli" ("each one") only at the end, attached to the opening action rather than repeated for both lowering and opening as in the Hebrew.