Genesis 44:13

Summary

This verse narrates three sequential actions taken by Joseph's brothers after the discovery of the cup: they tore their clothes, each man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city. The Hebrew presents these as a rapid chain of narrative events.

Key words

• yiqre'u ("they tore", H7167) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine plural, marked with the narrative vav that signals sequential action ("and then they tore").
• simlotam ("their clothes", H8071) — feminine plural noun in construct form with the third person plural suffix -am ("their"), literally "clothes of them."
• ya'amos ("he loaded", H6006) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine singular, shifting the subject from the collective "they" to the distributive ish ("each man", H0376I).
• chamoro ("his donkey", H2543) — masculine singular noun in construct form with the suffix -o ("his"), paired with the preposition 'al ("on", H5921A) to indicate what was loaded onto what.
• ha'irah ("toward the city", H5892B + H9011) — the noun 'ir ("city") combined with the directional he suffix, indicating motion toward a destination without needing a separate preposition.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence moves through three narrative verbs joined by the vav construction, each marking a new step in sequence: va-yiqre'u ("and they tore"), va-ya'amos ("and he loaded"), va-yashuvu ("and they went back"). This chain creates a tight, rapid succession of actions typical of Hebrew narrative prose, where each vav-prefixed verb picks up the story precisely where the previous one left off.

A grammatical shift occurs in the second verb: while the first and third actions are described with plural verbs (yiqre'u, yashuvu) referring to the brothers collectively, the second verb ya'amos ("he loaded") is singular, paired with the distributive noun ish ("each man", H0376I). This construction—singular verb plus ish—expresses that each brother individually performed the loading action, rather than describing it as one collective act. The construct chain chamoro ("his donkey") further ties this individual action to each specific brother's own animal.

The final word ha'irah uses the directional he suffix (H9011) attached directly to ha-'ir ("the city"), a common Hebrew mechanism for expressing "toward the city" without a separate preposition of motion.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chamoro ("his donkey", H2543) together with an added noun, τὸν μάρσιππον ("the sack/bag") before ἐπὶ τὸν ὄνον ("upon the donkey"), specifying that what was loaded was a sack placed onto the donkey — a detail not present in the Hebrew text, which only names the donkey itself as the object of the loading. The Vulgate's oneratisque rursum asinis ("the donkeys having been loaded again") uses the adverb rursum ("again"), an addition not found in the Hebrew, which simply states the loading action without indicating repetition.