What Does Genesis 14:6 Mean?
And the Horites in their mount Seir, to El-paran, which is by the wilderness.
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 the Horites in their mount Seir, unto El-paran, which is by the wilderness.THE KEY
The itinerary’s names make the terrain tactile: cave-associated Horites inhabit Seir, a mountain-name linked to shagginess.
THE MEANING
You meet the Horites in their mountain before the line reaches the wilderness edge. Their name evokes caves, and Seir carries a shaggy texture, so the terrain appears both inhabited and physical.
THE ROOT
חֹרִי
ḥori
GROWS FROM
חור
A hole or cave; hollow space.
“Horites” in this verse is ḥori. The name Horite is commonly associated with חוֹר, meaning “cave” or “hole.” That association makes their place in the mountain concrete: the route passes through a people whose name carries the landscape’s hollows.
ALSO GROWS
ḥor: A hole or cave.
חוֹר
This related word gives the Horites’ name a physical association with the mountain they inhabit.
ḥori: Horite; commonly understood as cave-dweller.
חֹרִי
This is the people-name in the verse, placing inhabitants within the landscape before the wilderness edge is named.
שֵׂעִיר
Seʿir
GROWS FROM
שׂער
Hair; hairy or shaggy.
The mountain-name Seir is linked to the Hebrew word-family for hair and shagginess. The name carries a tactile association with the terrain as the route continues toward the wilderness.
ALSO GROWS
seʿar: Hair.
שֵׂעָר
This related word supplies the physical image carried by Seir’s name.
saʿir: Hairy one; he-goat.
שָׂעִיר
This form shares the shaggy sense and echoes the mountain-name’s texture.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks movement through land by naming the people who inhabit it and the boundaries it reaches.
And the Horites in their mount Seir, to El-paran, which is by the wilderness.The Horim also settled in Seir in former days; but the children of Esau drove them out, and destroyed them from before them, and settled in their place; as Israel did to the land of his possession, which the LORD gave to them.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.THE THREAD
The Horim also settled in Seir in former days; but the children of Esau drove them out, and destroyed them from before them, and settled in their place; as Israel did to the land of his possession, which the LORD gave to them.The verse repeats both the Horites and Seir, then names their destruction and displacement from the mountain. It makes the route here carry human cost: the land’s boundary changes as people are driven from where they dwell.
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