Genesis 9:23 Septuagint

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Genesis 9 23. In the prior verse, we saw the prolonged gaze and the sinful disclosure of Ham about his father's state to his brothers. Now, we're going to see the brother's response.

[00:00:12]Calabantes same yahion epenta epi duo not alone eputheanos kunalup gumnosen to pat alone and then we'll finish it up here in just a moment.

[00:00:29]Well, we begin with labes here, the participle form of lambano. So, noun plural masculine aist active participle.

[00:00:37]And so, uh, and this nice participle here that's not exactly in the Hebrew, but it's a nice way to kind of smooth out the narrative. And so, taking, but the plural subject would be sham kai yafet. So, shim and japeth. So, taking and then we have tation. So, taking the garment. Now, notice that there is an article here, which is a little bit interesting because you would not expect the article to be there if it they're just sort of picking up a generic garment. You would expect it not to be articular. But the Maseretic actually has the article, too. And so, if you look at some of the commentators, one of the big questions is, is this uh Noah's Hemation, his cloak or outer garment, something like that? Did Ham bring it out to them? that's not narrated, but there's got to be some kind of reason why the article is there because you would expect it in this situation to refer back to some other prior garment that has already been identified, but it's not there. But that's one of the leading ideas is that maybe not only Ham spoke to them about their father's nakedness, but actually brought out his cloak or something to them and then they take it back in the room with them essentially is what's happening. So uh taking that garment epithent this is from epithe plural ais middle indicative here that is to place upon and so they put it upon and so this participle here therefore is adverbbally modifying this main verb and it's epatua not alone now not this is the uh plural of noton that's someone's back uh and so they place it upon their two backs in other words the picture here is that they're kind of side by side they take that garment they place it over their shoulders to their backside as they are now going back into the room where Noah is and then and a peruthean there sort of a normal third plural ais passive indicative from perui that the ending is very normal for the middle form and so they went uh so now they're going back into the room so we have one main verb here second main verb so having again placed that garment upon their backs their two backs they went and then we have a nice little uh kind of interesting little adverb here a piece which basically means backwards. Um, if you know a pistoraph, a pisto is like the other side. So, they're going backwards, if you will. Now, there's some debate about how exactly they accomplish this. Are they walking backwards? Are they looking backwards?

[00:02:54]It's not 100% clear. I don't know if it necessarily matters either way. They're trying to avoid looking at their father.

[00:02:59]That's the goal. And then, uh, sunsaloopsen there's from sunalup. That is a third singular, excuse me, third plural aist active indicative. And that means to cover up. So they cover. So they go, they cover. And what do they cover? Tain gumnosen. That's the nakedness or the shame uh of their father. And so presumably they're taking this garment and that's what they're using to cover up his nakedness having you know given that he had been uncovered in his drunken state. So that's the first part of verse 23. Then we finish it up here somewhat quickly.

[00:03:38]tone opumnos to patras alone adon. So here's just some clarification. Uh so we see that their face and notice it's a plural but a singular face but that's pretty common in Greek. So their face or their faces were opist. So this is the adjectival form of the one that we saw on the prior screen. That was the adverbial form.

[00:04:00]This is the adjectival form. And so it's describing their face their faces were backwards or facing to the back and therefore tangosen the nakedness of their father. So that's repeated from the prior part of the verse. Ukon uh Adon here being the third uh plural aist active indicative of horah. So they did not see him or they did not uh or they did not Yeah, they did not see him.

[00:04:28]Now that is a very strong contrast with what we saw with Ham in 9:22. He did aid in since that's the third singular form of the same verb tumnos to patrasal 2.

[00:04:40]So Ham did actually gaze upon the naked shamefulness of their of his own father.

[00:04:47]But here the uh two brothers do not do that. And so we see a very marked contrast. And so that's Genesis 9:23.

[00:04:55]Still kind of uh not the the most pleasant scene. And we'll see what happens next when Noah wakes up and what he does from here in the next video.