What Does Genesis 10:13 Mean?
And Mizraim brought forth Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim.
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 Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,THE KEY
The name Mizraim carries the image of “the two narrows,” and this line shows one origin branching into four named peoples.
THE MEANING
You encounter a family line that moves from one named source into four distinct peoples. Mizraim’s name holds the image of two constrictions, while “begat” describes what one source brings forth. The verse keeps both the narrowness and the branching visible in a single line.
THE ROOT
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צ-ר-ר
ṣ-r-r
To bind or constrict; the narrow or strait place.
“Mizraim” in this verse is Mitzrayim. The name carries the image of narrowness in its twofold form. Here, that name stands at the head of a line that branches into several peoples, holding constriction and multiplication together.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, strait, constricted.
צַר
This is the compact image carried in Mizraim’s name: a constricted place or condition.
tsarah: Distress, trouble, straitness.
צָרָה
The same consonant pattern links narrowness with the distress that can accompany constriction.
יָלַד
yalad
GROWS FROM
י-ל-ד
y-l-d
To bear, give birth, or bring forth.
“brought forth” in this verse is yalad. The word translated “begat” shares its root with words for a child and for generations. The line is presented as bringing-forth: four named peoples emerge from one named source.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The child is what the root’s act of bringing-forth produces.
toledot: Generations, descendants; what is brought forth.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch names the unfolding line of descendants that the verse begins to list.
THE PATTERN
Genealogies make identity visible as a branching line of named origins.
And the sons of Ham were Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.The sons of Ham, Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.The same name appears here as a progenitor and in Exodus as the land from which people are brought out. That repeated name opens this genealogy onto the movement from narrowness toward a broad, spacious land.
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