Genesis 44:21

Summary

Judah recalls to Joseph the instruction Joseph himself had given: to bring Benjamin down to him so that he could personally attend to him. The verse is reported speech within Judah's larger speech, quoting a command and its stated purpose.

Key words

• To.mer ("you said", H0559) — qal verb continuing the narrative chain with the vav-consecutive, marking this as the next reported event in Judah's retelling.
• Ho.ri.Du ("bring down", H3381) — hiphil (causative) imperative, plural "you all", directed at "your servants" (H5650); the causative stem frames the act as making Benjamin descend, not merely him coming.
• 'a.Si.mah ("let me set", H7760A) — a qal form here glossed as expressing intention/purpose ("let me set/do"), following the phrase describing the command, expressing the speaker's stated goal after the imperative.
• 'ei.N ("eye", H5869A) — feminine singular noun in construct form, joined to the suffix "my" (H9020), producing "my eye" as the object placed upon the person mentioned next.
• 'a.La ("on", H5921A) + suffix "him" (H9033) — preposition with pronominal suffix, marking the target of the "eye" placed by the speaker.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative vav on To.mer, signaling that Judah is continuing his chronological retelling: "and you said to your servants." The object of the command follows via the construct chain 'a.va.Dei-kha, "servants of you" = "your servants." The imperative Ho.ri.Du-hu, "bring him down," uses the hiphil stem, which in Hebrew often marks an action performed by an agent causing another to move or change state — here, causing Benjamin to come down (presumably to Egypt, from the higher elevation of Canaan in the geographic framing of the narrative).

The purpose clause follows with ve-'a.Si.mah 'ei.ni 'a.lav, "and let me set my eye upon him." The construct pair 'ei.N-i, "eye of me," is a fixed idiomatic expression; combined with the verb "to set" it conveys placing personal attention or oversight on someone, rather than a literal act of vision alone. The suffixed preposition 'a.lav, "upon him," locates that attention specifically on the person just commanded to be brought down.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the purpose clause as ἐπιμελοῦμαι αὐτοῦ, "I will take care of him" or "attend to him," an interpretive rendering of the idiom rather than a literal "set eye." The Vulgate's ponam oculos meos super illum, "I will place my eyes upon him," follows the Hebrew construction closely, retaining the eye-image. Among the modern versions given, the BSB interprets the idiom as "so that I can see him for myself," while the SBLIBRE similarly reads "para que yo lo vea con mis propios ojos" — both making explicit the visual sense that the LXX instead expresses as caretaking.