Yarad is the going-down verb, and the Tanakh uses it the way a composer uses a falling phrase. Yosef goes down to Egypt. Yonah goes down to Yafo, down into the ship, down into the hold, down to the roots of the mountains, four descents before the fish ever swallows him. Naaman goes down and immerses in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:14). The waters of the Jordan itself are twice called ha-yordim, the descenders, in a single verse (Joshua 3:16).

English renders it "went down," "descended," "came down," as plain direction, and the KJV, ESV, NASB, and NIV are all faithful and all flat. Direction is all the English carries. The reader never learns that the descents are one pattern with one grammar.

Because in the covenant pattern, down is never the end of the sentence. You go down to be changed: down into the water a leper, down into the pit a prisoner, down into Sheol a dead man, and the same story hands you back up. "You brought up my nefesh from Sheol" (Psalms 30:3). Yarad is the downstroke of redemption, and it only exists so that alah can answer it.