What Does Genesis 14:20 Mean?
And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. And he gave him a tenth of all.
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 blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.THE KEY
Abram’s tithe is a response to victory he first recognizes as something God placed in his hand.
THE MEANING
What reaches your hand can be recognized as something you received, and the verse shows that recognition taking shape in blessing and a tenth given back. The gift is named before the portion is returned; its source comes into view through the response.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that victory is solely a self-made possession: here, God is named as the one who delivers it, and giving follows.
THE ROOT
מִגֵּן
miggen
GROWS FROM
מגן
The verb means to hand over or deliver; a related noun from these consonants means shield.
“delivered” in this verse is miggen. The verse voices victory as something God hands into Abram’s keeping. The related word for shield adds an echo of protection to that handover: Abram’s hand receives what the verse credits to God.
ALSO GROWS
miggen: Delivered or handed over.
מִגֵּן
This is the verb used for God’s act in the verse: the enemies come into Abram’s hand by God’s giving.
magen: Shield.
מָגֵן
This related form places protection beside the idea of handover, keeping God’s role in the victory in view.
בָּרוּךְ
barukh
GROWS FROM
ברך
To bless; a related form names the knee.
“blessed” in this verse is barukh. The same consonants appear in בֶּרֶךְ (berekh, knee), giving blessing a bodily echo of bending. Here, blessing names God as the source of what Abram has received, before Abram gives a portion in return.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: Knee.
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared consonants bring the posture of bending into the sound of blessing.
berakhah: Blessing.
בְּרָכָה
This related noun carries the same root into the act of naming good as coming from its source.
מַעֲשֵׂר
ma'aser
GROWS FROM
עשר
Ten; the tithe is a tenth.
“a tenth” in this verse is ma'aser. The word keeps the number ten inside the gift: a tithe is a portion measured from the whole. “Of all” makes the giving concrete, the portion comes from what has been received.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeser: Ten.
עֶשֶׂר
The number remains audible in the word for tithe, showing how the portion relates to the whole.
ma'aser: A tenth or tithe.
מַעֲשֵׂר
This is the portion Abram gives from all he has received.
THE PATTERN
What is received from God becomes the source of what is returned to God.
But who am I, and what is my people, that we should hold the strength to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come from you, and from your hand have we given to you.For who sifts you apart? And what do you hold that you did not take? But if you did take it, why do you boast as though you had not taken it?Every good giving and every complete gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no shifting and no shadow cast by turning.THE THREAD
And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and be a blessing.“Blessed” here and “I will bless thee” there share the ברך (b-r-k, bless) root. Genesis 12:2 presents Abram as both recipient and bearer of blessing; here, victory is received and a portion is given in response.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us