What Does Genesis 24:23 Mean?
And he said, Whose daughter are you? Tell me, I pray you, is there a place in your father's house for us to lodge?
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 said, Whose daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father’s house for us to lodge in?THE KEY
In Hebrew, “room” is a place to stand: welcome begins when someone else can find a place in the household.
THE MEANING
Belonging meets you in the concrete question of whether there is room for you within a household. The verse joins who you come from with whether a place can be made for another person to stay. Welcome becomes tangible as space someone can occupy.
THE ROOT
מָקוֹם
maqom
GROWS FROM
קום
qum
To rise or stand.
The word translated “room” is מָקוֹם (maqom), meaning “place,” formed from קום (qum), meaning “rise” or “stand.” The question is whether there is a place in the household where a visitor can settle and remain.
ALSO GROWS
qam: stood or rose
קָם
This verb shows the root’s basic action: taking a stand or rising.
heqim: raised up or established
הֵקִים
A place is where someone can be set or established; the question makes hospitality a matter of giving another person a place.
THE PATTERN
A household’s welcome becomes visible in the actual place it makes for a visitor.
Let us make a little upper room on the wall, I pray you, and let us set there for him a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a lampstand. And it shall be, when he comes to us, that he shall turn aside there.For I hungered, and you gave me food; I thirsted, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you gathered me in.Do not let slip the opening of your home to strangers, for by it some have sheltered messengers without knowing it.THE THREAD
And he came upon a certain place, and lodged there all night, because the sun had come in; and he took stones from that place and set them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.Genesis 24:23 asks whether there is a מָקוֹם (maqom, place) in the father’s house where the visitors can lodge. Genesis 28:11 uses that same word for the place where Jacob settles for the night, making “place” the ground where someone can stop and remain.
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