The Genavensis græcus 44 is a Byzantine manuscript (13th century) of the Iliad. It contains, in addition to scholia, an interlinear paraphrase of the first twelve Books of the Homeric poem. The aim of this contribution is to examine the choice of the lexical equivalences used in the paraphrase in order to demonstrate that this practice, intended to clarify the meaning of the Iliad in a school context, borders on interpretation. For this purpose, a specific passage will be studied (Il., 5, 696-698) in order to illustrate the interactions at play between the poem, the paraphrase and the scholia, and to understand the way in which the reader of the Geneva manuscript is led to reflect on a phenomenological discourse on the porous state between life and death and on the exchanges between men and gods.