StrongerBible

amtaḥat

אַמְתַּחַת

HebrewH0572sack, bag

Appears 15 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 42:27Gen 42:28Gen 43:12Gen 43:18Gen 43:21 (2×)Gen 43:22Gen 43:23Gen 44:1 (2×)Gen 44:2Gen 44:8Gen 44:11 (2×)Gen 44:12
Root family
Word studyam-TAH-khatnoun

What amtaḥat means

a grain sack: the large open-topped bag that carried food home on a donkey, used in the Bible only of the bags Joseph's brothers brought back from Egypt

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong

All fifteen uses of this word sit inside one story, the journeys Jacob's sons make down to Egypt to buy grain during the famine. The bags are big. Joseph's steward is told to fill them with as much food as the men can carry, and when the brothers are stopped on the road home each of them has to lower his own bag off the donkey to the ground before it can be searched. The opening at the top is called the bag's "mouth", and that is where the silver keeps turning up, sitting right where the first hand inside will find it.

The word carries the plot. Twice the brothers' silver is put back into these bags without their knowing, and the second time a silver cup goes in as well, so the very bags meant to bring food home become the thing that traps them. By the time the steward searches the brothers in order from oldest to youngest and the cup comes out of Benjamin's bag, the reader has heard the word a dozen times and knows what is coming.

This is not a technical name for some special kind of container. Genesis 42:27 calls the same bag by the ordinary Hebrew word for a sack (שַׂק) at the start of the sentence and by this word at the end of it, and the chapter can also speak of the men's containers with the all-purpose word for gear or vessels (כְּלִי). What sets this word apart is not the bag itself but the fact that Hebrew reaches for it here and nowhere else in the whole Bible.

The name is usually traced to a verb meaning "to stretch out" (מָתַח), the word Isaiah uses of God stretching out the sky like a tent. That fits a bag pulled wide open and filled.

Gen 42:27Gen 42:28Gen 43:12Gen 43:18Gen 43:21 (2×)Gen 43:22Gen 43:23Gen 44:1 (2×)Gen 44:2Gen 44:8Gen 44:11 (2×)Gen 44:12

What scholars say about amtaḥat

BDB, HALOT, and DCH gloss אַמְתַּחַת as "sack, bag" and derive it from מתח "to spread out, stretch" with a prefixed aleph. The noun is confined to Gen 42:27-44:12, fifteen occurrences in twelve verses, and is unattested elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible; the Septuagint renders it with μάρσιππος through the episode, reserving σάκκος for שַׂק. Within the narrative the two Hebrew nouns denote the same containers: שַׂק at 42:25, 27, 35 and אַמְתַּחַת from 42:27 onward, alongside the generic כְּלִי at 42:25. That alternation of vocabulary has figured in source-critical treatment of the Joseph narrative, where doublets and lexical shifts have been weighed as evidence of composite authorship (Westermann; Speiser), while other commentators account for the variation within a unified composition (Wenham; Hamilton). No lexical dispute attaches to the sense: the discussion concerns only the type of bag in view, whether a grain sack or a pack carried by a donkey, a question on which the text supplies no decisive detail. The recurring phrase בְּפִי אַמְתַּחַת, "in the mouth of the sack", is what makes the planted silver and the cup discoverable at the moment of opening, and commentators note its role in the structure of the recognition scenes.

Sources

  • BDB, s.v. אַמְתַּחַתlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. אַמְתַּחַתlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. אַמְתַּחַתlexicon
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 37-50: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), on Genesis 42-44commentary
  • E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB 1; Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), on Genesis 42-44commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (WBC 2; Dallas: Word Books, 1994), on Genesis 42-44commentary
  • Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 18-50 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), on Genesis 42-44commentary

All attested forms of אַמְתַּחַת

f s construct

אַמְתַּחְתּוֹ

Gen 42:27, Gen 43:21, Gen 44:1, Gen 44:11, Gen 44:11

f p construct

אַמְתְּחֹתֵינוּ

Gen 43:18, Gen 43:21, Gen 43:22, Gen 44:8

f p construct

אַמְתְּחֹתֵיכֶם

Gen 43:12, Gen 43:23

f s construct

אַמְתַּחַת

Gen 44:2, Gen 44:12

f p construct

אַמְתְּחֹת

Gen 44:1

f s construct

אַמְתַּחְתִּי

Gen 42:28