Genesis 44:9

Summary

This verse records the brothers' proposal to Joseph's steward: whoever among them is found with the missing item will die, and the rest will become slaves to Joseph. The sentence moves from a conditional relative clause to two sequential consequences joined by narrative connectors.

Key words

• yimmatze ("it is found", H4672) — niphal (passive) imperfect: the finding happens to the person, not by his own action; grammatically open-ended, suiting a hypothetical case.
• vamet ("and he will die", H4191) — qal sequential perfect with prefixed va: continues the narrative logic from the previous clause, presenting death as the direct, chained consequence of being found guilty.
• gam ("also", H1571) — adverb intensifying the following pronoun, marking that the punishment extends beyond the guilty individual to the whole group.
• nihyeh ("we will be/become", H1961) — qal imperfect, 1st person plural: future/ongoing state, expressing what the group commits itself to becoming.
• avadeka ("your servants", H5650) construct plural + suffix — describes the brothers' current status as Joseph's servants, contrasted later with avadim ("slaves", H5650) in absolute plural, describing their proposed future status.

What the text says

The verse opens with the relative particle 'asher ("whom", H0834A) introducing a conditional clause: "whoever is found with it among your servants." The niphal form of yimmatze keeps the subject passive — the text does not say the person hid it or took it, only that the object is found in his possession. The clause then shifts to vamet, a sequential qal perfect attached by the narrative vav, presenting death as the logical next link in the chain rather than a separate independent statement.

The second half of the verse, introduced by ve-gam ("and also"), shifts the subject to anachnu ("we", H0587), the collective first-person plural. The verb nihyeh is imperfect, indicating a state not yet realized but proposed as binding. The noun la'avadim ("to slaves", H5650) is in absolute plural form, differing morphologically from me'avadeka ("from your servants", H5650) in the first half, which is in construct form with a second-person suffix. Both words share the same root but mark a shift from present relational status ("your servants") to a proposed future status ("slaves").

Differences between versions

The LXX explicitly names τὸ κόνδυ ("the cup"), an object not stated in the Hebrew clause, which only says "it" via the pronominal suffix on ito ("with him", H0854+H9033). The Vulgate similarly adds quod quæris ("which you seek"), also absent from the Hebrew wording. The LXX renders the death clause as an imperative, ἀποθνησκέτω ("let him die"), where the Hebrew vamet is a sequential perfect, not a command. The BSB's "the rest" is an interpretive addition; the Hebrew states only gam anachnu, "we also," without specifying "the rest" as excluding the guilty party.