Genesis 50:10

Summary

The verse narrates the arrival of Joseph's funeral procession at the threshing floor of Atad, east of the Jordan, where a great lamentation is performed. It then states that a mourning period of seven days was made for his father.

Key words

• Goren ("threshing floor of", H1637) — feminine singular noun in construct state, linking to Atad: "threshing floor of Atad," a specific place name marking the stopping point of the procession.
• 'Ever ("other side of", H5676H) — masculine singular construct noun, indicating location relative to the Jordan: "the other side of the Jordan."
• Mispéd ("a lament", H4553) with gadol ("great", H1419A) and khaved ("heavy", H3515) me'od ("very", H3966) — a noun modified by two adjectives intensified by an adverb, stacking descriptors of the lament's magnitude.
• Va-ya'as ("and he made", H6213H) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine singular; the subject is not named explicitly in this verse but continues the narrative chain from the preceding action.
• 'Evel ("mourning", H0060) — masculine singular noun, the object of the verb "he made," paired with shiv'at yamim ("seven of days", H7651+H3117G), a construct phrase specifying duration.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs: va-yavo'u ("and they came"), va-yispedu ("and they lamented"), and va-ya'as ("and he made"), each advancing the sequence of events. The first clause locates the arrival "to the threshing floor of Atad (H0329G)... which is on the other side of the Yarden (H3383)," using two construct chains (goren ha-atad, 'ever ha-yarden) to pin down the location precisely relative to the Jordan.

The lament itself is described with a noun-plus-double-adjective-plus-adverb structure: mispéd gadol ve-khaved me'od — "a lament, great and heavy, very" — piling up intensifiers rather than using a single strong term, which gives the Hebrew a cumulative, emphatic quality difficult to render with one adjective in translation.

The final clause, va-ya'as le-'aviv 'evel shiv'at yamim ("and he made for his father mourning, seven of days"), uses the construct shiv'at yamim ("seven of days") to express a defined period, and le-'aviv ("for his father," from 'av, H0001G, with 3ms suffix) marks Joseph — understood from the preceding narrative — as the one who performs this act, though the subject pronoun itself is only implicit in the verb form va-ya'as ("he made").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the mourning act with ἐποίησαν (plural, "they made") the πένθος ("mourning") for "seven days," differing from the Hebrew singular va-ya'as ("he made"), which some translations (e.g., BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) resolve by supplying "Joseph" as subject. The Vulgate similarly uses a plural construction, "celebrantes exequias... impleverunt septem dies" ("celebrating the funeral rites... they filled seven days"), matching the LXX's plural sense rather than the Hebrew's singular verb form.