Genesis 48:11

Summary

Israel tells Joseph that he had not expected to see his face again, and states that God has additionally shown him Joseph's offspring. The verse marks Jacob's (Israel's) emotional reaction upon reuniting with his son and grandsons.

Key words

pilalti ("I judged", H6419) — piel perfect, first person. The root normally carries the sense of judging or intervening, but combined with the preceding infinitive and negation it functions here as an idiom for "I did not expect / did not dare hope."

re'oh ("to see", H7200) — infinitive construct, placed at the head of the clause before the negation lo ("not", H3808). This fronting gives the sense "as for seeing your face, I did not expect [it]."

paneikha ("your face", H6440) — masculine plural noun in construct with the pronominal suffix -kha ("your", H9021). Hebrew treats "face" as grammatically plural even when referring to a single face.

her'ah ("he has shown", H7200) — hiphil perfect of the same root as re'oh. The hiphil (causative) stem turns "to see" into "to cause to see," i.e., "to show."

zar'akha ("your offspring", H2233) — masculine singular noun in construct with -kha ("your"). Though singular in form, zera' regularly denotes descendants collectively.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula vayomer Yisra'el el-Yosef ("and Israel said to Joseph", H0559/H3478/H0413/H3130), introducing direct speech. The first clause, re'oh paneikha lo pilalti, places the infinitive construct re'oh ("to see", H7200) before the negation lo ("not", H3808) and the finite verb pilalti ("I judged", H6419). This word order — object-infinitive first, negated verb last — is a Hebrew syntactic pattern that throws emphasis onto the act of seeing itself: literally "seeing your face, I did not judge/reckon [on]." The piel verb pilalti, whose root elsewhere concerns judgment or intercession, here operates idiomatically to express expectation or hope, a nuance a flat translation of "judge" would obscure.

The second clause is introduced by the interjection hineh ("here!", H2009), which draws attention to the ensuing statement, followed by the hiphil perfect her'ah ("he has shown", H7200) — the causative counterpart of the infinitive re'oh used earlier, creating a wordplay between "I did not expect to see" and "God has caused me to see." The direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) introduces both oti ("me", H9030) and zar'akha ("your offspring", H2233), joined by gam ("also", H1571), extending the object of seeing beyond Joseph himself to his descendants.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb pilalti ("I judged/expected", H6419) is active and cognitively framed ("I did not reckon on..."). The LXX renders this with a passive construction, οὐκ ἐστερήθην ("I was not deprived"), and the Vulgate similarly uses non sum fraudatus ("I was not defrauded/cheated"). Both Greek and Latin versions shift the idiom from an internal expectation ("I did not think/hope") to an external deprivation ("I was not denied/cheated of it"), describing the same event through a different verbal frame than the Hebrew original.