Genesis 44:27

Summary

Judah recounts to Joseph the words Jacob spoke to his sons: he calls himself "your servant" and Jacob "my father," and reports Jacob's statement that his wife bore him two sons, using the perfect tense to mark this as an established fact known to all present.

Key words

• avdekha ("your servant", H5650) — construct singular noun with pronominal suffix, part of a double construct chain ("your servant, my father") describing Judah's father from Joseph's perspective.
• avi ("my father", H0001G) — construct singular noun with 1st-person suffix, appositional to avdekha, identifying the speaker (Jacob) relationally to both Joseph and Judah.
• yeda'tem ("you know", H3045) — qal perfect, 2nd masculine plural; the perfect aspect here marks a state of knowledge already held, not a completed single event.
• she.nayim ("two", H8147) — dual cardinal number; stands alone without an explicit noun for "sons," the referent being understood from context.
• yaldah ("she bore", H3205) — qal perfect, 3rd feminine singular, referring to a past completed act of childbirth by Jacob's wife.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), introducing reported speech attributed to Jacob through Judah's retelling. The subject of this speech is expressed through a stacked construct phrase: avdekha avi ("your servant, my father"), where "servant" (H5650) and "father" (H0001G) are both construct nouns carrying pronominal suffixes — "your" servant and "my" father — layering two relational perspectives (Judah's father in relation to Joseph, and in relation to Judah himself) into a single compact phrase.

The reported speech itself begins with the independent pronoun atem ("you," H0859D), which is grammatically unnecessary since the verb yeda'tem already encodes the subject; its presence adds emphasis, singling out "you" as the addressees who already possess this knowledge. The perfect verb yeda'tem denotes a settled state of awareness rather than a discrete past action. The clause introduced by ki (H3588A) then reports the content known: shenayim yaldah li ishti ("two, my wife bore to me"). Notably, the Hebrew does not include a noun for "sons" after shenayim — the dual number itself, together with context, supplies the missing referent.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew leaves "sons" implicit after shenayim ("two"), relying on dual number and context; the LXX (δύο ἔτεκέν μοι ἡ γυνή) and Vulgate (duos genuerit mihi uxor mea) likewise omit an explicit noun for "sons," matching this ellipsis, while modern translations such as the BSB add "sons" explicitly for clarity. The Vulgate renders yaldah with the subjunctive genuerit ("might have borne"), a mood shift required by Latin syntax after "scitis quod," not present as a modal nuance in the Hebrew perfect yaldah.