Genesis 44:33

Summary

Judah asks Joseph to let him remain as a slave in place of the young man (Benjamin), so that the boy may return with his brothers. The verse is structured as a formal, polite request built on volitive verb forms and a substitution formula ("in place of").

Key words

• yeshev ("let him remain", H3427) — qal imperfect, here functioning volitively (not simple future) because it is paired with the particle na'.
• na' ("please", H4994) — interjection marking polite request; softens the volitive force of the preceding verb.
• 'avdekha ("your servant", H5650 + suffix) — construct noun with 2nd person suffix; Judah refers to himself in the third person as a mark of deference toward the addressee.
• tachat ("in place of", H8478) — construct noun used prepositionally to express substitution: one person standing "under/instead of" another.
• ya'al ("let him go up", H5927) — qal jussive, explicitly marking the second half of the sentence as a request/wish, parallel in force to yeshev...na'.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve-'atah ("and now/therefore"), a discourse marker introducing the concluding proposal of Judah's speech. The main clause uses yeshev ("let him remain") in the imperfect, which by itself could denote future action, but the added particle na' shifts its force toward a request — "let him please remain." The grammatical subject is 'avdekha, "your servant," a third-person self-reference: Judah speaks about himself as if from outside, a common device of deference in addressing a superior, here Joseph (referred to as "my lord," 'adoni, H0113).

The word tachat ("in place of") governs ha-na'ar ("the young man"), establishing the substitution: Judah offers himself as 'eved ("a slave", H5650) la-'adoni ("to/for my lord") instead of the boy. The second clause repeats the volitive pattern with ya'al, a jussive form of the verb "to go up" (H5927), governing ha-na'ar ("the lad") as subject, and closes with 'im-'echav, "with his brothers," a construct phrase with pronominal suffix. The two jussive/volitive clauses — one built with na' + imperfect, the other with a pure jussive — form a balanced parallel structure: "let him [Judah] remain... and let him [the boy] go up."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first clause in the first person, παραμενῶ σοι ("I will remain with you"), and the Vulgate similarly reads Manebo... servus tuus ("I will remain... your servant"), both shifting from the Hebrew's third-person self-reference ('avdekha, "your servant [he]") to direct first-person speech. The Hebrew tachat ha-na'ar ("in place of the young man") and 'eved la-'adoni ("a slave to my lord") appear in the LXX as ἀντὶ τοῦ παιδίου, οἰκέτης τοῦ κυρίου, preserving the substitution and servitude sense without the grammatical distancing found in the Hebrew construction.