Genesis 44:19

Summary

This verse is part of Judah's speech recalling an earlier exchange with Joseph (referred to as "my lord"). It reports, in indirect-turned-direct speech, that the lord had asked his servants whether they had a father or a brother.

Key words

• 'a.do.NI ("lord", H0113) — construct noun with 1st person suffix ("my"), the polite designation Judah uses for Joseph, whom he is addressing without using his name.
• sha.'AL ("he asked", H7592) — qal perfect, marking a completed past action: the asking already happened before the moment of speaking.
• 'a.va.DAV ("his servants", H5650) — construct noun with 3rd person masculine singular suffix ("his"), referring to Judah and his brothers as the lord's servants.
• le.MOR ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le, introducing the reported speech that follows; a standard formula for quoting words.
• ha.YESH ("is there / do you have", H3426 with interrogative ha) — the particle yesh asserts existence ("there is"), and the prefixed ha turns the statement into a question.

What the text says

The verse opens with 'adoni ("my lord"), placed first in the sentence, which in Hebrew word order gives prominence to the addressee before describing what he did. The verb sha'al ("he asked") is in the qal perfect, a simple completed action without any aspectual nuance beyond "he asked" — the Hebrew does not mark tense the way English does, but the perfect here functions as a straightforward past reference within the narrative Judah is recounting.

The phrase 'et-'avadav uses the object marker 'et (untranslated) to mark "his servants" as the direct object of "asked," and the suffix on 'avadav ("his servants") ties the servants back to the lord who asked them — this is a self-reference by Judah and his brothers, speaking of themselves in the third person as a mark of deference.

The introduction of direct speech follows the common formula le'mor ("saying"), after which the quoted question appears: ha-yesh-lakhem 'av 'o-'ach ("is there to you a father or a brother"). The construction yesh-lakhem ("there is to you") is the standard Hebrew way of expressing possession — literally "existence belongs to you" — rather than using a verb equivalent to "to have." The interrogative prefix ha signals that this is a question, a grammatical marker with no separate word for "do" as in English.