What Does Genesis 15:11 Mean?
And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram turned them back.
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 when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.THE KEY
The verb translated “drove” carries the image of making the birds blow away: Abram answers what descends by setting it in motion out.
THE MEANING
When something exposed is threatened, the threat is real, yet the scene shows Abram driving the descending birds away. Vulnerability does not make what is threatened already lost; danger and resistance appear together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that anything exposed to a threat is already beyond protection.
THE ROOT
וַיַּשֵּׁב
vayyashshev
GROWS FROM
נשב
nashav
to blow; to cause something to blow away
The verb translated “drove” comes from a root meaning “to blow,” and its causative form pictures Abram making the birds blow away. The same form elsewhere describes wind set in motion, revealing a shared image of force that disperses what has come near.
ALSO GROWS
vayyashshev: he caused them to blow away; he drove them off
וַיַּשֵּׁב
Here the blowing-away image names Abram’s response to the birds descending on the carcasses.
yashshev: he causes [the wind] to blow
יַשֵּׁב
In Psalm 147:18 the same root describes wind set in motion, making the dispersing force in Abram’s action visible.
THE PATTERN
A threat approaching what is vulnerable can meet a response that interrupts its power to consume.
And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram turned them back.And I went out after him, and struck him, and snatched it from his mouth; and when he arose against me, I seized him by his beard, and struck him, and killed him.Therefore place yourselves under God. Stand against the Slanderer, and he will flee from you.THE THREAD
He sends out his word and melts them; he causes his breath to blow, and the waters flow.The verb behind “drove” in Genesis shares its root with “causeth his wind to blow” in this psalm. In one verse Abram drives away what descends; in the other, wind is set in motion and the waters flow.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us