Genesis 44:30

Summary

The verse belongs to Judah's speech to Joseph, describing the hypothetical scene of returning to his father without Benjamin. It states that if the father sees the boy is absent, the situation is critical because the father's life is bound to the boy's life.

Key words

• bo'i ("my coming", H0935G) — qal infinitive construct with 1st person suffix, giving a temporal sense: "when I come/came," setting up the conditional/temporal frame of the sentence.
• avdekha ("your servant", H5650) — construct noun with 2nd person suffix, referring to Judah's father in deferential third-person self-lowering speech typical of ancient Near Eastern address to a superior.
• einenu ("he is not", H0369) — construct particle of non-existence with 3rd person suffix, negating the presence of the na'ar ("lad", H5288) rather than using a standard negative verb form.
• qeshurah ("bound", H7194) — qal passive participle, feminine singular, describing a state of being tied/attached, applied metaphorically to nafsho ("his life/soul", H5315H).
• nafsho...benafsho ("his life...in his life", H5315H) — the same noun repeated with two different 3rd person suffixes, creating the image of one nefesh bound to another nefesh.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve-'attah ("and now", H6258/H9002), a discourse marker shifting from narration to consequence, followed by a temporal clause built on the infinitive bo'i ("my coming"). This infinitive construction, common in Biblical Hebrew for expressing "when I do X," ties the coming to Judah ("I") arriving 'el-'avdekha avi ("to your servant, my father"), where "your servant" functions as an indirect self-reference to the father in polite speech before Joseph.

The second clause, introduced by ve-hana'ar einenu itanu ("and the lad is not with us"), uses the existential negative particle 'eyn with a pronominal suffix and preposition 'itanu ("with us", H0854/H9035), stating the boy's absence as a simple fact within the hypothetical scenario, without a finite verb.

The final clause states ve-nafsho qeshurah benafsho ("and his life is bound in his life"). The passive participle qeshurah describes a durative state rather than a single action, and the repetition of nefesh with two different suffixes (his own and his father's) creates a linked structure: one nefesh is tied to another nefesh. The Hebrew does not specify explicitly whose nefesh is bound to whose beyond the pronominal suffixes, requiring the reader to infer from context that the father's nefesh is bound to the boy's.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the temporal infinitive clause as a conditional (ἐὰν, "if"), turning "when I come" into "if I go in," which shifts the certainty implied by the Hebrew infinitive construct into explicit hypothetical mood. The Vulgate follows this conditional reading with "si intravero" ("if I shall have entered"). Regarding the final clause, the Hebrew's participial phrase qeshurah benafsho ("bound in his life") appears in the LXX as ἐκκρέμαται ἐκ ("hangs from"), and in the Vulgate as "pendeat" ("hangs/depends"), both using a different verb of dependency rather than the Hebrew image of binding (qashar, H7194).