Genesis 44:5
The cup which you have stolen is that in which my lord drinketh, and in which he is wont to divine: you have done a very evil thing.
Open Genesis 44:5 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- scyphus, quem furati estis, ipse est in quo bibit dominus meus, et in quo augurari solet : pessimam rem fecistis.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- οὐ τοῦτό ἐστιν ἐν ᾧ πίνει ὁ κύριός μου; αὐτὸς δὲ οἰωνισμῷ οἰωνίζεται ἐν αὐτῷ· πονηρὰ συντετέλεσθε ἃ πεποιήκατε.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- הֲל֣וֹא זֶ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר יִשְׁתֶּ֤ה אֲדֹנִי֙ בּ֔וֹ וְה֕וּא נַחֵ֥שׁ יְנַחֵ֖שׁ בּ֑וֹ הֲרֵעֹתֶ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר עֲשִׂיתֶֽם
Haydock's commentary
To divine. This was spoken by Joseph to his steward in jest; alluding to the notion of the people, who took him to be a diviner. (Challoner)
St. Thomas Aquinas, 2, 2, q. 195, a. 7. Hebrew may be translated without attending to the points, "Is not this the cup, out of which my lord drinketh; and he has augured, or discovered, by it the evil which you have committed." Pliny (Natural History xxx. 2.) mentions a method of divining, by means of water in a basin. (Calmet)
The Egyptians probably supposed, that Joseph used some means to disclose what was hidden; and he alludes, in jest, to their foolish notion. (Haydock)
He had a right to afflict his guilty brethren; and as for Benjamin, who was innocent, he made him ample recompense for this transitory terror. Some think that the steward said, in which he is wont to divine, unauthorized by his master. (Menochius)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Hippolytus The Refutation of All Heresies, Chapter III
For, says he, it is necessary that the magnitudes be declared, and that they thus be declared by all everywhere, “in order that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see.” For if, he says, the magnitudes were not declared, the world could not have obtained consistence. These are the three tumid expressions (of these heretics), Caulacau , Saulasau, Zeesar , i.e., Adam, who is farthest above; Saulasau , that is, the mortal one below; Zeesar , that is, Jordan that flows upwards. This, he says, is the hermaphrodite man (present) in all. But those who are ignorant of him, call him Geryon with the threefold body, Geryon, i.e., as if (in the sense of) flowing from earth, but (whom) the Greeks by common consent (style) “celestial horn of the moon,” because he mixed and blended all things in all. …