Genesis 50:9

Summary

The verse reports that chariotry and horsemen accompanied Joseph on his journey to bury Jacob, and describes the resulting group as extremely large. The Hebrew uses a correlative construction ("both...and") and a singular verb form despite the compound subject.

Key words

• ya'al ("it went up", H5927) — qal narrative verb, 3rd masculine singular, continuing the wayyiqtol chain of the story; grammatically singular even though its subject (chariotry and horsemen) is compound.
• rekhev ("chariotry", H7393) — masculine singular noun, a collective term for chariots.
• parashim ("horsemen", H6571) — masculine plural noun, paired with rekhev by the gam...gam ("both...as well as", H1571) construction.
• machaneh ("company", H4264) — feminine singular noun with the definite article ha (H9009), referring to the assembled group as a single entity.
• kaved ("numerous", H3515) — masculine singular adjective, literally "heavy," here modifying machaneh and intensified by me'od ("very", H3966).

What the text says

The clause va-yaal imo gam-rekhev gam-parashim places the verb ya'al ("it went up") before its double subject, which is introduced by the paired adverb gam...gam (H1571), linking rekhev ("chariotry") and parashim ("horsemen") as two coordinated elements accompanying the subject "him" (the pronominal suffix -o on imo, H9033). The verb remains singular despite the compound subject, a pattern in Biblical Hebrew narrative where the verb can agree with the first-mentioned noun or treat the pair as a unified collective action rather than as separate grammatical plurals.

The second clause, va-yehi ha-machaneh kaved me'od, shifts to describing the resulting group as a single feminine singular noun, machaneh ("company," with definite article), modified by the adjective kaved ("heavy/numerous") and strengthened by me'od ("very"). The adjective kaved carries the literal sense of "heavy" or "weighty," here applied metaphorically to size or multitude — the text does not use a word meaning "large" in a spatial sense, but one associated with weight or gravity, extended to convey magnitude of numbers.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the verb as synanebēsan (plural, "they went up together"), matching the compound subject grammatically, where the Hebrew ya'al is singular. The Vulgate uses habuit ("he had"), recasting the sentence so that the subject having chariots and horsemen is explicitly Joseph, a syntactic structure differing from the Hebrew's "and it went up with him." For machaneh kaved me'od, the LXX uses parembolē megalē sphodra ("camp very great"), and the Vulgate has turba non modica ("no small crowd"), both conveying magnitude but through different lexical choices than the Hebrew's "heavy" (kaved).