What Does Exodus 1:6 Mean?
And Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “generation,” dor, names both an age and its people: this is the passing of a whole human span, not just a list of deaths.
THE MEANING
A life ends, and even the circle that shared it is finite; no generation stays intact forever. Still, the passing of its people does not stop the story from changing around their absence.
THE ROOT
דּוֹר
dor
GROWS FROM
דור
The noun dor means a generation or age; it is associated with the verb dur, to circle or dwell, carrying the sense of a recurring span.
“All that generation” gathers a whole age of people into one phrase. The word holds the span of time and the people who fill it together, so its ending is larger than one person’s death.
ALSO GROWS
dor: generation, age
דּוֹר
This is the word used here: a span of time named through the people who belong to it.
dor va-dor: generation to generation
דּוֹר וָדוֹר
The repeated form names succession across ages, showing how one generation can end while the word also describes generations continuing.
יוֹסֵף
Yosef
GROWS FROM
יסף
To add, increase, or continue.
Joseph’s name carries the sense “he adds,” while the verse names his death and the passing of his whole generation. The juxtaposition lets increase and ending sit together: no one person’s continuation measures whether the story continues.
ALSO GROWS
yasaph: to add, increase, or do again
יָסַף
This verb carries the seed behind Joseph’s name and makes “he adds” more than a label.
Yosef: he adds; Joseph
יוֹסֵף
The name evokes increase just as the verse records the end of Joseph and his generation.
THE PATTERN
A generation passes as a whole, while life and care continue beyond its members.
One generation walks away, and another generation comes, but the earth stands for ages.A Prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, you are our dwelling place in generation and generation.And his faithful love is for those in awe of him, from generation to generation.THE THREAD
One generation walks away, and another generation comes, but the earth stands for ages.Both verses use the Hebrew noun dor for “generation.” Ecclesiastes spells out the succession compressed into Exodus: one human circle passes, and another arrives.
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