Genesis 45:25

Summary

The verse narrates the departure of Joseph's brothers from Egypt and their arrival in the land of Canaan, where their father Jacob was. Two consecutive verbs of movement mark the stages of the journey: leaving Egypt and arriving in Canaan.

Key words

• ya'alu ("they went up", H5927G) — qal verb, narrative form (vav-consecutive), indicating a sequential action in the story; the choice of "going up" reflects the geographic movement from Egypt toward Canaan.
• yavo'u ("they came", H0935G) — qal verb, also narrative form, continuing the sequence of actions initiated by the previous verb.
• 'erets ("land of", H0776G) — feminine singular noun in construct state, syntactically linking to kena'an ("Canaan", H3667A) to form the phrase "land of Canaan".
• avi ("father", H0001G) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking to the pronominal suffix that follows.
• -hem ("their", H9028) — pronominal suffix attached to avi, forming avihem ("their father"), specifying whose father Jacob is.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two narrative verbs joined by the vav-consecutive (va, H9001), a construction that chains successive actions in the story: first ya'alu ("they went up", H5927G) mi-Mitsrayim ("from Egypt", H4714G), then yavo'u ("they came", H0935G) 'erets Kena'an ("land of Canaan", H0776G + H3667A). This sequence presents the departure from Egypt and the arrival in Canaan as two distinct but linked moments in the narrated action.

The final phrase, 'el-Ya'aqov 'avihem ("to Jacob their father", H0413 + H3290 + H0001G + H9028), specifies the destination of the second verb: the brothers did not simply arrive in a territory, but reached the person of their father. The noun 'avi ("father") appears in construct state with the suffix -hem ("their"), a common grammatical construction in Biblical Hebrew that expresses possession by directly joining the noun to the pronominal suffix, without a separate possessive word.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text places the geographic sequence (Egypt → land of Canaan) before naming Jacob as the destination. The Vulgate follows a similar order to the Hebrew and the LXX, naming Canaan before the father. The BSB, however, reorders the phrase, stating that the brothers "came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan," placing the father before the location, unlike the sequence found in the Hebrew, the LXX, and the Vulgate.