Genesis 46:29

Summary

Joseph harnesses his chariot and travels to meet his father Israel in Goshen. When he sees him, he falls on his neck and weeps at length. The verse closes the narrative gap between father and son after their long separation.

Key words

• ye'sor ("he harnessed", H0631) — qal narrative form, the first act in the chain of actions, showing Joseph as the initiator of the meeting.
• liqrat ("to meet", H7122) — infinitive with prefixed preposition li ("to"), expressing purpose: Joseph goes up in order to meet Israel.
• va-yippol ("he fell", H5307) — qal narrative verb; the grammatical subject is only marked as "he," continuing the chain of third-person masculine verbs begun with Joseph, so the referent must be inferred from context rather than fixed by the form itself.
• tzavarav ("his necks", H6677A) — masculine plural noun in construct with the suffix "his"; the plural form for a body part that is anatomically singular is a known feature of this noun in Biblical Hebrew and is repeated twice in the verse.
• 'od ("still/yet", H5750) — closes the sentence, modifying the extent or continuation of the weeping described by va-yevk ("he wept", H1058).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — va-ye'sor, va-ya'al, va-yera, va-yippol, va-yevk — each attached with "and then," giving the sentence a rapid sequential rhythm typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative prose. All these verbs share the third-person masculine singular "he," which keeps grammatical continuity but leaves the identity of the one who "falls on the neck" open to interpretation from the discourse context, since Hebrew does not restate the subject noun at each verb.

The phrase 'al-tzavarav ("on his neck[s]") occurs twice, once with the falling and once with the weeping, each time using the plural construct form tzavarav. This repetition, plus the closing word 'od ("still" or "yet"), emphasizes duration — the weeping is presented as continuing rather than as a single instantaneous act. The infinitive liqrat ("to meet") marks Joseph's chariot journey as purposeful, directed specifically toward encountering his father in Goshen.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the destination not as "Goshen" but as καθ' Ἡρώων πόλιν ("toward the city of the Heroes"), diverging from the Hebrew Goshna ("to Goshen", H1657G + directional he). The Vulgate similarly avoids naming Goshen, using ad eumdem locum ("to that same place"), aligning with the LXX's non-toponymic phrasing rather than the Hebrew's explicit place name.

Regarding the weeping, the Hebrew's two uses of 'al-tzavarav ("on his neck") and the closing 'od ("still") are condensed in the LXX into a single clause, ἔκλαυσεν κλαυθμῷ πίονι ("he wept with abundant weeping"), replacing the repeated physical detail with a qualifying adverbial phrase. The Vulgate's inter amplexus flevit ("he wept amid embraces") similarly summarizes rather than repeating the neck imagery found twice in the Hebrew.