Genesis 44:14

Summary

The verse narrates that Judah, together with his brothers, entered the house of Joseph, who was still present there, and describes them all falling to the ground before him. It functions as the narrative transition into Judah's ensuing speech.

Key words

• yavo ("he came/entered", H0935G) — qal wayyiqtol form, the standard narrative past tense that advances the storyline ("and then he entered").
• beita ("house of", H1004B) — construct noun with the directional he suffix (H9011) attached, producing the sense "toward/into the house of," rather than a static location.
• od-enu ("he [was] still", H5750 + H9043) — the adverb/particle od takes a pronominal suffix ("his still-ness"), a construction that expresses ongoing presence without a separate verb "to be."
• yiplu ("they fell", H5307J) — qal wayyiqtol plural, again a narrative-chain verb marking the next sequential action of all the brothers together.
• artsah ("toward the ground", H0776H + H9011) — noun erets ("ground/land") with the same directional he suffix seen in beita, indicating motion toward the ground rather than simple location "on the ground."

What the text says

The verse is built entirely on the narrative wayyiqtol chain (va-yavo... va-yiplu), which in Biblical Hebrew signals sequential action: first the entering, then the falling. Two nouns in this verse — beita ("house") and artsah ("ground") — carry the directional he suffix (H9011), a Hebrew grammatical device that turns a plain noun into a marker of movement toward that place. This is why the same suffix pattern occurs twice in one verse: it frames the scene as motion into Joseph's house and then motion down to the ground before him.

The clause ve-hu od-enu sham ("and he was still there") uses od with an attached pronominal suffix rather than a finite verb "to be," a common way in Hebrew to express a state of continuing presence. This construction sets up a temporal note — Joseph had not yet left — before the action of falling resumes with va-yiplu.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders beita Yosef ("into the house of Joseph") as πρὸς Ἰωσήφ ("to/toward Joseph"), dropping the explicit reference to the "house" found in the Hebrew construct phrase. The Vulgate expands the same clause about Joseph's continued presence into a parenthetical explanatory remark, necdum enim de loco abierat ("for he had not yet departed from the place"), where the Hebrew simply states ve-hu od-enu sham ("and he was still there") without explanatory framing. The Vulgate also adds Primusque ("and first"), making explicit that Judah entered before the others, a nuance not marked by a separate word in the Hebrew text itself.