Genesis 46:31

Summary

Joseph speaks to his brothers and his father's household, announcing his plan to go inform Pharaoh about their arrival. He rehearses in direct speech what he intends to say to Pharaoh: that his brothers and his father's household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to him.

Key words

• va-yYomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the main storyline action that opens the verse.
• 'e'eLeh ("I will go up", H5927G) — qal imperfect, first person, expressing an action Joseph intends to carry out, not yet completed.
• 'aGidah ("I will tell", H5046) — hiphil (causative) form, listed as infinitive in the data; the causative stem conveys "causing to be known" (i.e., reporting/announcing) to Pharaoh.
• 'omeRah ("I will say", H0559) — qal, listed as infinitive in the data, introducing the embedded direct speech that Joseph plans to deliver to Pharaoh.
• Ba'u ("they have come", H0935G) — qal perfect, third person plural, marking the completed action of the brothers' arrival within the quoted speech.

What the text says

The verse is structured around a chain of speech acts: Joseph "says" (yYomer) to his brothers and father's household about what he himself will do and say. The sentence moves from Joseph's own intended actions — 'e'eLeh ("I will go up") and 'aGidah ("I will tell") — into a second layer of direct speech introduced by 'omeRah ("I will say"), which contains the actual words Joseph plans to speak to Pharaoh. This creates a nested quotation: Joseph tells his family what he will later tell Pharaoh.

Within that inner quotation, the construct chains 'aChai ("my brothers", H0251G) and veit-'aVi ("household of my father", H1004M/H0001G) identify the subjects, followed by the relative clause with 'aSher ("who", H0834A) locating them "in the land of Canaan" (be-'eretz-Kena'an). The clause closes with Ba'u ("they have come", H0935G), a qal perfect verb indicating the arrival is a completed event from the perspective of the report Joseph will give — even though grammatically this is inside a still-future speech act ('omeRah, "I will say"). The construct forms (X of Y) throughout — "brothers of Joseph," "household of father," "land of Canaan" — link people and places without independent articles, typical of Hebrew genitive relationships.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the speech differently in structure: it has Joseph speak "to his brothers" (πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς αὐτοῦ) without a separate mention of "father's household" as a second addressee in that opening clause, where the Hebrew explicitly lists both 'eChav ("his brothers", H0251G) and beit 'aViv ("household of his father", H1004M/H0001G) as those addressed. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure more closely, addressing both "fratres suos" and "omnem domum patris sui" ("all the house of his father"), adding omnem ("all") as an interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew wording itself.