Genesis 46

## Summary Genesis 46 narrates Jacob's departure from Canaan to Egypt, a divine reassurance given at Beersheba, a genealogical list of the seventy family members who migrate, and the emotional reunion with Joseph, concluding with instructions on how to answer Pharaoh about their occupation as shepherds. ## Key words - *va-yiSa'* ("he set out", H5265) — qal narrative form opening the chapter, marking Jacob's departure as the next event in the story chain. - *'anoKhi* ("I", H0595) — independent personal pronoun used emphatically twice by God (vv.3-4), stressing the divine speaker's identity separately from the verb. - *nefesh* ("person/soul", H5315) — feminine singular noun used repeatedly as a counting unit for individuals (vv.15,18,22,25-27), even when referring to groups of males, showing it functions as a headcount term rather than a grammatically gendered description. - *ro'ei tzon* ("shepherds of sheep", H7462B construct with H6629G) — qal participle in construct state, identifying the brothers' occupation, a term repeated in vv.32 and 34 to justify settlement in Goshen. - *tzavarav* ("his neck", H6677A) — masculine plural noun with 3ms suffix, used twice in v.29 to describe Joseph falling and weeping on his father's neck, the plural form referring to a single neck in Hebrew idiom. ## What the text says The chapter opens with three consecutive narrative verbs (*va-yisa'*, *va-yavo*, *va-yizbach*, all H9001 vav-prefixed) that chain Jacob's journey to Beersheba and his sacrifice there, a syntactic pattern typical of Hebrew narrative sequence. The divine speech in vv.2-4 uses doubled vocative address (*Ya'akov Ya'akov*) and repeated *'anokhi* before finite verbs, a construction that foregrounds the subject pronoun for emphasis not reproducible in English without added words like "It is I who...". The genealogical section (vv.8-25) is structured entirely through construct chains—*bnei X* ("sons of X", H1121A)—listing descendants by mother (Leah, Zilpah, Rachel, Bilhah), with each subunit closed by a *nefesh* count. The totals (33, 16, 14, 7) sum to 70 in v.27, using *nefesh* as an abstract counting noun rather than requiring feminine agreement with the male individuals counted. In v.34 the brothers' scripted answer uses *anachnu* ("we", H0587) and *avoteinu* ("our fathers", H0001G plural construct) to construct a generational claim of occupation, tied to the note that shepherding is *to'avat Mitzrayim* ("abomination of Egypt", H8441)—a construct phrase the Hebrew presents as a stated fact within the speech, not an external narrator's judgment. ## Differences between versions The LXX gives Joseph's sons additional genealogical detail in v.20 (naming Manasseh's son Machir and grandson Galaad, and Ephraim's descendants) that is absent from the Hebrew (MT), Vulgate, and BSB. In v.27, the LXX numbers Joseph's Egyptian-born sons as *ennea* ("nine") and the total household as seventy-five, where the Hebrew (MT), Vulgate, and BSB give two sons and a total of seventy.