Genesis 45:7

Summary

Genesis 45:7 records Joseph explaining that God sent him ahead of his brothers with a double purpose: to establish for them a remnant in the land, and to keep them alive through a great deliverance. The verse uses two parallel infinitive clauses to express God's intention behind the events described.

Key words

• yishlacheni ("he sent me", H7971G) — qal verb with narrative vav and 1st-person suffix; establishes Elohim as the acting subject and Joseph as the object of that action.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — plural noun functioning as singular subject, naming the agent behind the whole sequence of events.
• lasum ("to make/place", H7760H) — qal infinitive with prefixed lamed, marking purpose ("in order to establish").
• she'erit ("a remnant", H7611) — feminine singular noun, the direct object of lasum, denoting what is to be established "in the land" (ba'aretz, H0776G).
• lehachayot ("to preserve alive", H2421) — hiphil (causative) infinitive with lamed, second purpose clause, causative form indicating an active preserving of life rather than mere survival.

What the text says

The verse is built as one long sentence anchored by the narrative verb yishlachENI ("and he sent me"), followed by the subject Elohim, and the spatial phrase lifneichem ("before you," from panim, H6440G, construct plus suffix). After this main clause, two infinitive-with-lamed constructions extend the sentence to state the divine purpose: lasum...she'erit ba'aretz ("to establish...a remnant in the land") and u-lehachayot...li-fleitah gedolah ("and to keep alive...by a great deliverance"). The grammar subordinates both actions to the single sending event, so the Hebrew presents Joseph's arrival in Egypt as the mechanism through which two distinct but related outcomes—continuity of a group in the land, and survival on a large scale—are secured. The shift from the plain qal infinitive lasum to the causative hiphil infinitive lehachayot marks a grammatical distinction between "placing/establishing" a remnant and actively "causing to live," a nuance not visible when both are rendered simply as "preserve."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders she'erit ba'aretz ("a remnant in the land") as kataleimma tēs gēs ("a remnant of the earth"), using a genitive relation instead of the Hebrew's locative "in the land." The Vulgate turns the active infinitive construction into a passive subjunctive, reservemini super terram ("that you may be preserved upon the earth"), shifting the causative agency implicit in the Hebrew hiphil. For the second clause, where the Hebrew has lehachayot...li-fleitah gedolah ("to keep alive...by a great deliverance/escape," H2421 + H6413 + H1419A), the LXX has ekthrepsai...katalipsin megalēn ("to nourish...a great remnant"), and the Vulgate has escas ad vivendum habere possitis ("that you may have food to live"), both introducing a nourishment/food sense absent from the Hebrew verb hachayot and noun pleitah, which instead denote survival through escape rather than provision of food.