Genesis 44:6

Summary

The verse narrates that the steward overtook the brothers and spoke to them the words he had been instructed to say. It is a short transitional sentence connecting the previous command (to pursue them) with the following direct speech.

Key words

• va-yassigem ("and he overtook them", H5381) — hiphil (causative) verb: literally "he caused [himself/his pursuit] to reach them," with the 3rd person plural suffix "them" (H9038) attached directly to the verb.
• va-yedabber ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel (intensive) verb, narrative form, indicating a formal or emphatic act of speaking, not merely casual talk.
• elehem ("to them", H0413 + H9038) — preposition with pronominal suffix, marking the recipients of the speech.
• et (H0853) — the direct object marker, untranslated, signaling that "the words" is the grammatical object of "he spoke."
• ha-devarim ha-elleh ("these words", H1697G + H0428) — noun with definite article followed by a demonstrative with its own article, a construction meaning "these particular words," pointing forward to the speech that follows.

What the text says

The verse consists of two parallel narrative clauses, each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001) attached to a verb, producing the typical Biblical Hebrew chain "and he did X... and he did Y..." The first clause, va-yassigem ("and he overtook them", H5381), uses a hiphil verb form, which in Hebrew grammar often expresses causation ("he caused to overtake" = "he caught up with"). The object "them" is not a separate word but a suffix fused onto the verb itself, a common feature of Hebrew that compresses subject-verb-object into a single word.

The second clause, va-yedabber ("and he spoke", H1696G), is in the piel stem, an intensive verbal pattern, here used for the standard verb "to speak" in narrative contexts. This verb takes an indirect object marked by the preposition el ("to", H0413) with a plural suffix, "to them" (elehem), specifying the audience.

The final phrase, et ha-devarim ha-elleh ("these words"), uses the direct object marker et (H0853), which has no independent meaning in translation but grammatically flags "the words" as what was spoken. The double definite construction — article on "words" and article on the demonstrative "these" — is standard Hebrew syntax for "these words," functioning as a forward-pointing reference to the speech that follows in the next verses.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) diverges structurally: instead of "he overtook them," it reads fecit ille ut jusserat ("he did as he had been ordered"), shifting the focus to obedience to a prior command rather than the physical act of catching up. It then adds per ordinem ("in order/sequence"), a phrase not present in the Hebrew or the LXX, describing how he addressed them. The LXX (LXXSWETE) uses heurōn ("having found") rather than a verb of overtaking, and kata ta rhēmata tauta ("according to these words") rather than a direct object construction, softening the grammatical directness of the Hebrew's object-marked phrase.