What Does Genesis 19:38 Mean?
And the younger, she also, bore a son, and called his name Benammi, son of my people. He is the father of the children of Ammon to this day.
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 younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.THE KEY
Ben-ammi means “son of my people”: the name already carries the belonging his descendants make visible.
THE MEANING
Ben-ammi means “son of my people,” and the verse holds that name beside the people who descend from him. One birth is both a person’s beginning and the beginning of a lineage, joining identity and belonging across generations.
THE ROOT
וַתֵּלֶד
vatteled
GROWS FROM
ילד
Bear, give birth; beget.
“bore” in this verse is vatteled. The root links the act of bearing to the words for child and generations: this birth is already the first link in a lineage. English can make birth and descent feel like separate facts; Hebrew lets them grow from the same seed.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The child is not separate from the act of birth; both belong to the same root.
toledot: Generations; begettings or family line.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch makes the verse’s movement from one birth to a people visible in the root itself.
וַתִּקְרָא
vattiqra
GROWS FROM
קרא
Call, proclaim, summon.
“called” in this verse is vattiqra. The root carries more than assigning a label: it can announce or summon. Here the name Ben-ammi, “son of my people,” declares kinship as part of the child’s identity.
ALSO GROWS
qeri’ah: Calling; reading aloud.
קְרִיאָה
A name spoken aloud makes identity public, rather than leaving it as a private thought.
miqra: Assembly or proclaimed reading.
מִקְרָא
This branch preserves the root’s sense of a call made audible and shared; Ben-ammi’s name announces a belonging.
THE PATTERN
A child’s birth and name become a lineage that can widen into a people.
And the firstborn bore a son, and called his name Moab, from the father. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.No longer shall your name be called Abram, but Abraham, father of multitudes, for I have set you as a father of many nations.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.“Bare” in both verses comes from ילד (yalad), meaning “bear, give birth; beget.” In Genesis 4:1 the same root begins a family line; here it carries one birth forward into the name of a people.
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