What Does Genesis 17:2 Mean?
And I will set my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.
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 I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.THE KEY
The verse joins covenant with multiplication: the bond between God and a person becomes the setting for life to expand.
THE MEANING
Here covenant is a bond between God and a person, and increase unfolds within that bond. The verse speaks of multiplying exceedingly: life expanding beyond its present measure. It gives the reader a picture of abundance growing within relationship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that covenant diminishes life: here, the bond itself is joined to extraordinary increase.
THE ROOT
וְאַרְבֶּה
veʾarbeh
GROWS FROM
רבה
r-b-h
To become many or increase.
English can make “multiply” sound like a numerical result, but this root names becoming many, an expansion of life. With “exceedingly” repeated, the verse presses that increase beyond ordinary measure.
ALSO GROWS
rav: Many; great.
רַב
The same root carries both multitude and greatness, giving “multiply” the sense of expansive increase.
hirbah: To increase or make many.
הִרְבָּה
This form names causing increase, echoing the promise that God will multiply the person addressed.
THE PATTERN
God’s promise of increase is framed as a relationship that opens life beyond its present measure.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain, your wine, and your oil, the young of your herd and the flocks of your sheep, in the land he swore to your fathers to give you.Saying, "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying, I will multiply you."THE THREAD
And I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and I will give all these lands to them, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.Genesis 26:4 repeats the same Hebrew root for increase, joining multiplication to Abraham’s seed and to God’s promise. It opens this verse further by showing the promised increase extending into generations and blessing the nations.
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