Genesis 44:3

Summary

Genesis 44:3 marks a temporal transition: daylight arrives, and the men (Joseph's brothers) are sent away together with their donkeys. The verse uses two verbs in the perfect aspect to present these as completed actions marking the start of the day's events.

Key words

• bo.ker ("morning", H1242) — masculine singular noun, subject of the first clause.
• 'or ("it was light", H0215) — qal perfect verb; the completed/simple aspect marks daybreak as an accomplished event, not a process.
• shu.le.chu ("they were sent off", H7971) — pual perfect, an intensive passive form; the men are grammatical subjects of a passive verb, meaning the action is done to them rather than by them.
• He.mah ("they", H1992) — independent personal pronoun following the passive verb, adding emphasis to "they" as the ones sent.
• cha.mo.rei.Hem ("their donkeys", H2543 + H9028) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, joined by the conjunction va. ("and", H9002) to He.mah, forming a compound subject: "they and their donkeys."

What the text says

The verse opens with a short nominal-verbal clause, ha.Bo.ker 'or — literally "the morning, it was light" — using the qal perfect of 'or (H0215) to state that daylight had arrived, without further elaboration on the process of dawning. This clause is separated by the conjunction ve. ("and", H9002) from the second clause, which shifts to the human actors.

In the second clause, ha.'a.na.Shim shu.le.Chu ("the men were sent off"), the verb is in the pual (intensive passive) perfect, indicating that the men underwent the action of being sent rather than performing it themselves. The grammar does not specify the agent (who sent them) in this clause alone. Following the verb, the pronoun He.mah ("they", H1992) is added — this is grammatically redundant since the verb already agrees with "the men," but its presence reinforces the subject, emphasizing that it was specifically they (and not others) who were sent. The final phrase, va.cha.mo.rei.Hem ("and their donkeys"), is grammatically joined to He.mah by the conjunction va., forming a compound subject: "they and their donkeys" — both the men and their animals are presented as the entities sent off together.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (dimissi sunt cum asinis suis, "they were sent away with their donkeys") renders the Hebrew compound subject "they and their donkeys" using the preposition cum ("with"), treating the donkeys as accompaniment rather than as a coordinated grammatical subject alongside "they," as the Hebrew va. ("and") structure presents it. The LXX preserves the coordinating structure with καὶ ("and"), rendering αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ ὄνοι αὐτῶν ("they and their donkeys"), closer to the Hebrew's paired subject construction than the Vulgate's ablative-style phrasing.