Genesis 44:16

Summary

Judah responds to Joseph's steward (and to Joseph) after the silver cup is found in Benjamin's sack, admitting through three rhetorical questions that no defense is possible. He states that God has exposed the brothers' guilt and offers all of them, not only Benjamin, as slaves.

Key words

• no.Mar ("we will say", H0559) — qal imperfect, first of three parallel questions built on mah ("what?", H4100), asking what can be verbally said.
• ne.da.Ber ("we will speak", H1696G) — piel imperfect of the same root family used for "speak," the piel stem intensifying the act of speaking compared to the plain qal verb.
• nitz.ta.Dak ("we will justify ourselves", H6663) — hithpael imperfect, a reflexive/self-directed stem: the action of "justifying" is turned back onto the subject, i.e., an attempt to make themselves appear righteous.
• ma.Tza' ("he has found", H4672) — qal perfect, completed action with ha.'E.lo.Him ("the God", H0430G) as subject, marked with the definite article ha (H9009).
• nim.Tza' ("it was found", H4672) — niphal (passive) perfect of the identical root as ma.Tza', but here referring to the cup being discovered in Benjamin's hand rather than to divine action.

What the text says

Judah's speech opens with three consecutive clauses introduced by the interrogative mah (H4100), each paired with a different verb stem: no.Mar (qal), ne.da.Ber (piel), and nitz.ta.Dak (hithpael). The first two clauses in the Hebrew are joined without any connector (asyndeton), while the third is attached with va ("and," H9002), producing an escalation from mere "saying," to intensified "speaking," to reflexive "self-justification" — the hithpael stem grammatically marking the last as an action directed at the self, i.e., an attempt to construct one's own innocence.

The sentence then shifts to a statement using ha.'E.lo.Him (H0430G) with the definite article as subject of ma.Tza' (H4672, qal perfect, "has found"), attributing the discovery of guilt ('a.Von, "guilt of," H5771H, in construct with "your servants") to divine action. Later in the verse, the same root matza' reappears as nim.Tza' (H4672), now in the niphal (passive) stem, describing the cup that "was found" in the hand of the guilty brother (be.ya.Do, "in his hand," H3027G with suffix H9023). The repetition of one root in two different verbal stems — active/qal for God's act of finding, passive/niphal for the cup's being found — links the two events grammatically without a shared conjugated agent.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the three parallel Hebrew questions with the connector ἤ ("or") between each — "τί ἀντεροῦμεν... ἢ τί λαλήσωμεν... ἢ τί δικαιωθῶμεν" — whereas the Hebrew leaves the first two clauses unconnected and joins only the third with va ("and"). The LXX also translates 'a.Von (H5771H, "guilt/iniquity") as ἀδικίαν ("injustice/wrongdoing"), a related but not identical semantic field. The Vulgate's "juste poterimus obtendere" ("will we be able to plead justly") expands the single reflexive verb nitz.ta.Dak into a phrase involving ability ("poterimus"), not present as a separate grammatical element in the Hebrew hithpael form.