To REMEMBER — and in Hebrew never merely 'to recall.' It means to act on behalf of, to take up someone's cause, and in Genesis it is the covenant verb: 'God REMEMBERED Noah' and the waters went down (8:1); 'God REMEMBERED Abraham' and Lot was pulled out of the overthrow (19:29); 'God REMEMBERED Rachel' and Joseph was born (30:22). Every time God remembers someone in this book, a rescue follows. Which is what makes Genesis 40 land: Joseph asks a man to remember him (40:14), and the chapter's last verse is 'the chief of the cupbearers did not REMEMBER Joseph — and he forgot him' (40:23). The verb is put in human hands with a favour attached, and it fails. Two years later the same man's first words are 'I REMEMBER my faults today' (41:9). ⭐ In Deuteronomy the verb becomes a legal motive. Ve-zakharta ki eved hayita, remember that you were a slave, stands in five verses of the Hebrew Bible, all in that book — the sabbath at 5:14, the freed slave at 15:15, the Feast of Weeks at 16:12, and the widow's garment and the gleanings at 24:18 and 24:22 (now on these pages) — each time fastened to a law for someone who cannot enforce it. And the absolute zakhor, remembering as a standing order, opens 24:9, remember what Jehovah your God did to Miriam, and 25:17 (now on these pages), remember what Amalek did to you — the only two verses of the Bible in which zakhor et asher asah stands, built as twins with the middle swapped. → first discussed at Gen 40:23