Genesis 44:4

Summary

The verse narrates that Joseph's brothers had not gone far from the city when Joseph instructed the man in charge of his household to pursue them, overtake them, and confront them with the question of why they repaid good with evil. The sentence moves from a temporal clause about the brothers' departure into Joseph's direct command sequence.

Key words

• hem ("they", H1992) — an independent personal pronoun placed at the very start of the verse, giving emphasis to the subject before the verb, marking a shift of scene back to the brothers.
• hirchiku ("they had gone far", H7368) — hiphil perfect, a causative stem indicating they had caused themselves to be far away; negated by lo' ("not", H3808), meaning they had not put distance between themselves and the city.
• kum redof ("arise, pursue", H6965B / H7291) — two qal imperatives in sequence, giving direct, urgent commands with no connecting conjunction between them.
• hissagtam ("you will overtake them", H5381) — hiphil sequential perfect, continuing the chain of instructions begun by the imperatives; the causative stem conveys "cause to reach/overtake."
• shillamtem ("have you repaid", H7999A) — piel perfect, an intensive stem expressing a completed act of repayment, used here in a rhetorical question.

What the text says

The verse opens with a fronted pronoun, hem ("they", H1992), followed by yatze'u ("they came out", H3318G) and the negated hirchiku ("they had gone far", H7368), establishing that the brothers were still near the city when the action resumes. The clause uses the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) before ha-'ir ("the city", H5892B), a standard Hebrew construction marking the definite object of the verb "came out."

The second half of the verse shifts to Joseph's speech, introduced by ve-Yosef 'amar ("and Joseph said", H3130G/H0559), addressed la-'asher 'al beito ("to the one who was over his household", H0834A/H5921A/H1004M), a relative construction identifying the household official without naming him. Joseph's instructions form a chain: two qal imperatives, kum ("arise", H6965B) and redof ("pursue", H7291), followed by two sequential perfects, hissagtam ("you will overtake them", H5381) and 'amarta ("you will say", H0559), a common Hebrew pattern where perfect forms with vav continue a series of imperatives as future/sequential actions. The final question, introduced by lamah ("why?", H4100), uses shillamtem ("have you repaid", H7999A) with ra'ah tachat tovah ("evil in place of good", H7451I/H8478H/H2896C), where tachat (H8478H) functions as a construct noun meaning "in place of."

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) adds material not present in the Hebrew or the Vulgate: after the question "why have you repaid evil for good," it includes an additional clause, "why have you stolen my silver cup," which has no counterpart in the Hebrew text of this verse. The LXX also renders the question with "to me" (ἀνταπεδώκατέ μοι), a first-person object not explicit in the Hebrew shillamtem ra'ah tachat tovah, which lacks an indirect object pronoun. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure closely, rendering lo' hirchiku as "processerant paululum" ("they had proceeded a little") rather than a direct negation of distance, and it omits any reference to the silver cup, matching the Hebrew's scope for this verse.