What Does Genesis 29:31 Mean?
And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
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 LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for Leah’s “womb” shares its root with “compassion,” giving her physical opening an echo of tenderness.
THE MEANING
When you are marked as the unwanted one, you are still seen: the LORD sees Leah in her rejection, and her womb opens. Rachel remains barren, so the verse holds one woman’s opening beside another’s unresolved condition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that being hated means being unseen.
THE ROOT
רַחְמָהּ
raḥmāh
GROWS FROM
רחם
To show compassion or tender affection.
The word for Leah’s womb belongs to the same Hebrew root family as the words for compassion. That echo joins bodily opening with tenderness while leaving Leah’s rejection and Rachel’s barrenness plainly in view.
ALSO GROWS
raḥamim: Compassion, tender mercies.
רַחֲמִים
This branch names compassion directly, revealing the tenderness echoed in the word for Leah’s womb.
riḥēm: He showed compassion.
רִחֵם
This verbal branch presents compassion as an act, echoing the LORD’s response after seeing Leah’s rejection.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names affliction and reproach openly, placing divine regard alongside them while leaving each person’s outcome distinct.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.He settles the uprooted woman in the house, a glad mother of children. Praise the LORD.Thus the LORD has done this for me in the days when he looked upon me, to lift away my reproach among the people.THE THREAD
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those in awe of him.The Hebrew word for Leah’s womb, rechem, shares the root רחם with the verb translated “pitieth” here. That root links bodily life with compassion, letting the two verses illuminate one another.
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