- Text of the passage (in Nawat)
(KJV) 'Now thou art commanded, this do ye.' There is something awkward about the syntax here which makes it uncertain how exactly it is to be read. The pual tzuwwéta 'you are commanded' isn't impossible (it's the passive corresponding to the active tziwwitíkha 'I have commanded you'; perhaps the use of the passive is comparable to the royal we of other monarchical cultures). But the verse division, which throws it together with the following words (beginning zot ‛asu), makes for a strange sequence, for it seems to suggest (and this is reflected in translations generally) that what follows tzuwwéta forms part of what Joseph is being commanded by Pharaoh. But Pharaoh began his commands to Joseph in v. 17 (wayyómer par‛o el yosef emor el axékha zot ‛asu...), and notice that he already said zot ‛asu once there! So one "take" on this is that Pharaoh "starts again" in the present verse, adding further instructions. Now in v. 17 Pharaoh's command consists of instruction to Joseph about what to say to his brothers and this is explicit: emor el axékha... The second time, if that is what is intended, the emor clause has been omitted. Alternatively, in v. 19 the zot ‛asu clause includes Joseph and so this is not what Joseph has to say to his brothers, but what he and his brothers are to do. Except that Joseph doesn't go with his brothers, so that seems unlikely. Yet if Joseph begins speaking in v. 19 after tzuwwéta, we would expect not only a different kind of verse grouping (or cantillation) but also a wayyómer yosep el axékha or something to that effect, which is missing. Since anyone who doesn't understand H or isn't looking at the passage is probably lost by now, let me try to clarify what we have here:
v. 17
wayyómer par‛o el yosef 'Pharaoh said to Joseph'
emor el axékha 'Tell (singular) your (singular) brothers (plural)' [i.e. Jo. should tell his brothers]
zot ‛asu 'Do (plural) this' [Ph. tells Jo. to tell his brothers that they should do this]
A list of commands follows, all in the plural; these are things Ph. wants Jo. to tell the bros to do.
v. 18
The list of commands continues.
v. 19
w'atta tzuwwéta 'You (singular) are commanded.' [This isn't part of the previous list of commands because it is in the singular; the person who is commanded is Joseph and it is Pharaoh who says to him 'you are commanded']
zot ‛asu 'Do (plural) this' [???? Who? And who is saying this, Ph. or Jo.?]
q'xu lakhem me'éretz mitzráyim ‛agalot l'Tapp'khem ulinshekhem un'satem et avikhem uvatem 'Take (plural) from Egypt carts for your (plural) children and your (plural) wives and pick up (plural) your (plural) father and come (plural).' [From the sense, the subject seems to be the eleven brothers, not including Jo. Therefore they are problably the "who" of the preceding zot ‛asu too.]
v. 20
More stuff addressing a plural 'you', which we must assume is the same addressee as in v. 19 and therefore does not include Joseph, so that the most likely speaker here is Joseph, though it could perhaps be Pharaoh.
v. 21
wayya‛asu khen b'ne yisra'el wayyitten lahem yosef ‛agalot ‛al pi far‛o wayyitten lahem tzeda laddérekh 'The children of Israel did so and Joseph gave them carts on Pharaoh's orders and gave them food supplies for the journey.' [Clearly, Joseph wasn't going with them. Clearly, then, the subject of zot ‛asu in v. 19 is the eleven.
This brings us back to the awkward transition in v. 19: w'atta tzuwwéta 'you (singular) are commanded' zot ‛asu 'do (plural) this': it is Pharaoh who said w'atta tzuwwéta (to Joseph), but who says zot ‛asu to the eleven brothers? It seems easier to assume that Joseph does. That means that Pharaoh's last words on the matter are w'atta tzuwwéta 'you have been commanded'. This is followed, then, immediately, by Joseph's first words to his brothers: zot ‛asu 'Do this', which parrots the first words that Pharaoh told Joseph he was to tell his brothers in v. 17. In that case, the only "odd" things to explain are that the verse has been made to start before 'you have been commanded' rather than after it, and that there a wayyómer yosep is missing. If on the other hand we take the position that the verse division is "correct" and Pharaoh hasn't finished giving his commands but just decided to throw in a w'atta tzuwwéta in the middle of it all for good measure, the questions to be answered are: why does he start his commands again (repeating zot ‛asu), and why in that case does the text fail to include, the second time, emor el axékha 'tell your brothers'?
All this explication might seem a little unnecessary and overlaboured, but it is needed if we want to make sense of the various attempts of other translations to hammer some sense into this, often using a rather heavy hammer, it seems to me, and interpolating various bits that are not to be found in the Hebrew (which I will underline):
KJV: (17) And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; (18) And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. (19) Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. [Makes it sound like Pharaoh is speaking all the time and including Joseph in the orders in v. 19. The 'now' is to smooth over the odd interpolation of 'thou art commanded.']
ESV: (17) And Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Say to your brothers, 'Do this: load your beasts...' etc. etc. (19) And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, 'Do this: take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and bring your father, and come.' [Takes the hinted reading of KJV and forces it on the reader by injecting some new elements to make that reading explicit (thereby excluding the ambiguities of the original). 'Joseph' is added to specify that Pharaoh is addressing him (which he had to be), and 'to say' is gratuitously added to improve the sense while also excluding any possibility that Joseph might be speaking here.]
JPS: (17) And Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Say to your brothers, 'Do as follows: load up your beasts...' (19) And you are bidden [to add], 'Do as follows: take...'" [The interpolation 'to add' (the brackets are in the original translation) forces the interpretation that these are still Pharaoh's instructions, not Joseph's words.]
Now let us look at the annotations of our commentators. Century Bible's note is short and sweet: "The change [near the beginning of v. 19] from 'thou' to 'ye' is awkward. Probably 'now thou art commanded' concludes Pharaoh's instructions to Joseph; while 'This do ye' etc. is Joseph's charge to his brethren. Speiser's approach is different: he suggests that the text may be wrong and that it didn't originally say tzuwwéta 'you have been commanded' but rather something like tzaw otam 'command them', in support of which he cites the LXX and the Vulg. But the LXX and the Vulg. do more than change that, they reformulate the whole passage, especially the Vulg. Despite this, Speiser's translation proposal is: 'You are further requested to say: Do the following.'
‛agalot
The term occurs four times in this part of the story and nowhere else in Genesis. The gloss for ‛agala in CHALOT is: 'wagon, cart (not chariot).' The word for chariot, which we have already seen in 41:43 and which will reappear in ch. 46, is merkava.
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