Genesis 48:21
וַיֹּאמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל־יוֹסֵף הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי מֵת וְהָיָה אֱלֹהִים עִמָּכֶם וְהֵשִׁיב אֶתְכֶם אֶל־אֶרֶץ אֲבֹתֵיכֶֽם׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ אֶל־יוֹסֵ֔ף הִנֵּ֥ה אָנֹכִ֖י מֵ֑ת וְהָיָ֤ה אֱלֹהִים֙ עִמָּכֶ֔ם וְהֵשִׁ֣יב אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֶל־אֶ֖רֶץ אֲבֹתֵיכֶֽם׃
εἶπεν δὲ Ἰσραὴλ τῷ Ἰωσήφ ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἀποθνήσκω, καὶ ἔσται ὁ θεὸς μεθ’ ὑμῶν καὶ ἀποστρέψει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν γῆν
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Et ait ad Joseph filium suum: En ego morior, et erit Deus vobiscum, reducetque vos ad terram patrum vestrorum.
Luego Israel le dijo a José: “Como ves, estoy a punto de morir; pero Dios estará con ustedes y los hará volver a la tierra de sus antepasados.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y dijo Israel á José: He aquí, yo muero, mas Dios será con vosotros, y os hará volver á la tierra de vuestros padres.
Then Israel said to Joseph, “ Look, I am about to die, but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Israel addresses Joseph directly, announcing his imminent death, and follows this with two statements about the future: that God will be with the group addressed and will bring them back to the land of their fathers.
Key words
- Met ("about to die", H4191) — qal participle, describing an ongoing/imminent state rather than a completed or future finite action; hence "the one dying" or "about to die."
- haYah ("he will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence after the participle Met; grammatically it projects forward in time relative to the speech.
- Elohim ("God", H0430G) — noun, masculine plural in form, functioning as the subject of haYah.
- heShiv ("he will bring back", H7725J) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, indicating that the subject (God) causes the object (Khem, "you") to return.
- avotei-Khem ("your fathers", H0001G + H9026) — plural construct noun with pronominal suffix, forming "land of your fathers" as a construct chain with Eretz ("land", H0776G).
What the text says
The verse opens with the narrative formula vaYomer Yisra'El 'el-Yosef ("and Israel said to Joseph"), marking direct speech introduced by the vav-consecutive on Yomer ("he said", H0559). Within the speech, Israel uses the interjection hiNeh ("here!", H2009) followed by the independent pronoun 'anoKhi ("I", H0595) and the participle Met. The participle construction (hiNeh 'anoKhi Met) presents the dying not as a completed event but as a present, unfolding condition — a common Hebrew way of marking imminence without a dedicated future tense.
The two following clauses are linked by ve- plus sequential perfect verbs (haYah, heShiv), a grammatical pattern that continues the temporal flow set up by the participle: first the state of dying, then what follows from it. Elohim functions as subject of haYah, paired with the preposition 'imma-Khem ("with you", H5973A + H9036), and heShiv is hiphil, meaning the subject causes the action of returning upon the object marked by 'et-Khem ("you", H0853 + H9036). The final phrase, 'el-'Eretz 'avotei-Khem, uses a double construct chain — "land of fathers of you" — building a single compound expression for the ancestral territory.
Differences between versions
The Hebrew text ends with 'avotei-Khem ("your fathers"), rendered in the Vulgate as "patrum vestrorum" ("of your fathers"). The LXX text as given here is truncated after εἰς τὴν γῆν ("into the land"), omitting any equivalent to "of your fathers" in the provided Greek excerpt.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.