Exodus 1:6

Analysis and Discussion

Here is our verse:

> וַיָּ֤מָת יוֹסֵף֙ וְכָל־אֶחָ֔יו וְכֹ֖ל הַדּ֥וֹר הַהֽוּא​

Here is a translation:

And Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.

The first verb is in the very common "vav-consecutive" form - it's often used in stories to signal a transition between events, time frames, or ideas. The verb form without the vav at the beginning is technically the imperfect form. By the way, the imperfect form is when there are prefixes at the beginning of the verb. Here, for instance, the י is not part of the root; it's a prefix. It signifies that the verb is in the third-person masculine singular form ("he died"). Tenses are sometimes quite hard to figure out in Hebrew; for now, assume that we translate this in the simple past tense because we know that from the narrator's point of view, it happened in the past.

In the phrase וְכָל־אֶחָ֔יו, "and all his brothers," remember that the hyphen in Hebrew is very similar to the hyphen in English. It connotes a close relationship between words - closer than English. In Hebrew, it's called the maqqef. Notice also the suffix on the word אח, "brother." First, you have the י, which in this case means were talking about more than one brother. Then, you have the ו, which means "his." However, you pronounce the whole thing "akhiv" - the suffix is pronounced "-iv". Hope that makes sense.

Finally, we have the word דור, which means "generation." Whenever you have a phrase like הדור ההוא, it means simply "that generation." Same thing applies to הספר הזה "that book" or האנשים האלה "these people." In other words, we wouldn't translate it as "the generation the that" (which is woodenly what it says) but "that generation." If the writer had wanted to say "this generation" we would find הדור הזה instead.

That's it! Have a good one.