Genesis 46:4

Summary

God speaks to Jacob, promising to accompany him down to Egypt and to bring him back up again, using an emphatic construction. The verse closes with the image of Joseph placing his hand over Jacob's eyes.

Key words

• 'anokhi ("I", H0595) — the independent personal pronoun, repeated twice (positions 1 and 8), placed before each verb for emphasis rather than relying on the verb's built-in subject marking alone.
• 'ered ("I will go down", H3381) — qal imperfect, first person, describing the ongoing/future action of descending.
• 'a'alkha ("I will bring you up", H5927H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect: the causative stem indicates the speaker causes the "you" to go up, not merely goes up himself.
• 'aloh ("completely ", H5927H) — qal infinitive absolute, from the same root as 'a'alkha; this form intensifies or reinforces the finite verb it accompanies.
• yashit ("he will put", H7896H) — qal imperfect, third person masculine, describing Joseph's future action toward Jacob's eyes.

What the text says

The verse divides into two symmetrical clauses, each opening with the independent pronoun 'anokhi ("I", H0595) followed by an imperfect verb of motion. In the first, 'anokhi 'ered ("I, I will go down", H0595 + H3381) uses the qal stem for a simple future action — the speaker's own descent 'immekha ("with you", H5973A + H9031) to Mitzraymah ("toward Egypt", H4714G + H9011, the directional he marking the destination). In the second, 'anokhi 'a'alkha ("I, I will bring you up", H0595 + H5927H) shifts to the hiphil stem of the same root used for "going up," making the action causative: the subject does not merely ascend but causes another to ascend.

This second clause is reinforced by gam 'aloh ("also, completely", H1571 + H5927H), where the infinitive absolute 'aloh repeats the root of 'a'alkha to intensify the verbal idea — a common Biblical Hebrew construction that grammatically underlines certainty or completeness of the action, though it cannot be rendered as a separate word in translation.

The final clause introduces Yosef ("Joseph", H3130G) as subject of yashit yad ("he will put [his] hand", H7896H + H3027H), a construct phrase followed by the suffix -o ("his", H9023). The object is 'al 'eineikha ("over your eyes", H5921A + H5869A + H9021), with 'eineikha in construct dual form modified by the second-person suffix.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'aloh (infinitive absolute intensifier) as εἰς τέλος ("to the end/completely"), interpreting the emphatic verbal repetition as an adverbial phrase rather than reproducing verb-root repetition. The Vulgate renders the same clause as inde adducam te revertentem ("from there I will bring you back returning"), adding the participle "revertentem" not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew. For yashit yad ... 'al 'eineikha ("he will put hand ... over your eyes"), the LXX has ἐπιβαλεῖ τὰς χεῖρας ("he will lay his hands," plural) where the Hebrew uses the singular construct yad ("hand", H3027H).