Genesis 50:18

Summary

Genesis 50:18 narrates that Joseph's brothers came before him, prostrated themselves, and declared themselves to be his servants. The verse is composed of three sequential actions marked by narrative verb forms, culminating in the brothers' direct speech.

Key words

• yelekhu ("they went", H1980H) — qal narrative form, third person masculine plural, opening the sequence of actions with "and then they went."
• yippelu ("they fell", H5307G) — qal narrative form, describing the physical act of falling/prostrating; paired with the preposition le ("to", H9005) plus panav ("his face/presence", H6440G) with the suffix -o ("his"), literally "they fell to his face."
• yomeru ("they said", H0559) — qal narrative form introducing the brothers' direct speech that closes the verse.
• hinennu ("here we [are]", H2009 + suffix H9045) — the interjection hinneh combined with the first-person plural suffix, a fixed idiom presenting the speakers to the listener.
• avadim ("slaves/servants", H5650) — masculine plural noun, preceded by le ("to", H9005) marking the predicate of belonging: "to you, as servants."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of three narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — yelekhu, yippelu, yomeru — each introduced by the narrative vav that pushes the story forward in sequence: they went, then they fell, then they said. The subject of the first two verbs is echav ("his brothers", H0251G with suffix H9023), stated explicitly with the adverb gam ("also", H1571), meaning "also his brothers" — the phrase "also" implies that this action follows or complements a previous one already told in the surrounding narrative.

The physical gesture is expressed through yippelu le-panav ("they fell to his face/presence"), a construct phrase where panim ("face", H6440G) governs the pronominal suffix "his," a common Hebrew idiom for prostration before someone.

The brothers' declaration is introduced by hinennu ("here we [are]", H2009+H9045), a self-presenting formula, followed by lekha la-avadim — literally "to you, for slaves/servants" — using two prepositions (le, H9005) to express both possession ("belonging to you") and function ("as servants").

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) does not include the verb corresponding to yippelu ("they fell") — it renders only "having come to him, they said," omitting the prostration gesture found in the Hebrew. The Vulgate (Clementine), by contrast, adds the participle "adorantes" ("worshipping/adoring") alongside "proni" ("prostrate"), an expansion not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew text, which uses only yippelu ("they fell").