What Does Genesis 29:27 Mean?
Fill her week, and we will give you this also for the serving which you shall serve with me another seven years.
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
Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.THE KEY
The bridal week and the added years of labor rise from the same Hebrew root for seven, measuring the threshold and its cost by one recurring number.
THE MEANING
You encounter a promised gift bound to a term: the bridal week must be completed, and seven more years of service are attached. The repeated seven measures both a short threshold and a long labor, keeping the cost of the exchange visible.
THE ROOT
שָׁבוּעַ
shavua
GROWS FROM
שבע
sh-b-ʿ
Seven; this same consonantal root also forms the word for an oath, traditionally linked to swearing by seven.
The word for “week” is built on the root for seven, and the verse echoes it immediately with “seven other years.” The same root also yields an oath, adding an echo of commitment beside the plain count: a wedding threshold and a work term are measured with the same seed.
ALSO GROWS
sheva: The number seven.
שֶׁבַע
The verse repeats this same word in “seven other years,” joining the week to the extended labor term.
shevuah: An oath or sworn pledge.
שְׁבוּעָה
This related form adds an echo of binding commitment to the measured span.
עֲבֹדָה
avodah
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
Work or serve.
“serving” in this verse is avodah. “Service” and “serve” share the root עבד (ʿ-b-d, “work/serve”). The sentence binds what is given to the continuing work itself, placing labor right beside the gift as its stated condition.
ALSO GROWS
avad: To serve or work.
עָבַד
This verb is the action named in the promise of seven more years.
eved: A servant or worker.
עֶבֶד
This related noun shows how the same root names both the labor and the person bound to service.
THE PATTERN
Seven marks a bounded span that can order labor, rest, and communal time.
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he stopped on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.And you shall count for yourself seven stopping-years, seven years seven times, and the span of the seven stopping-years shall be for you forty-nine years.For he said somewhere concerning the seventh day in this way, "And God settled on the seventh day from all his works."THE THREAD
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they were in his eyes like a few days, for the love he had for her.“Served” comes from עבד (avad, “serve/work”), the same root behind “service” and “serve” in this verse. The earlier seven-year term for Rachel returns here as seven more years, now attached to the completed bridal week.
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