What Does Genesis 30:7 Mean?
And Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant, conceived again, and bore Jacob a second son.
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 Bilhah Rachel’s maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son.THE KEY
“Conceived again” and “a second son” frame this birth as life continuing through repetition.
THE MEANING
Bilhah conceives once more and bears Jacob another son. The verse presents this birth as a continuation of what has already begun.
THE ROOT
שֵׁנִי
sheni
GROWS FROM
שׁנה
Repeat, do again.
The word rendered “second” belongs to a family built around repetition. Beside “conceived again,” it makes continuation the verse’s central movement: another birth follows the first.
ALSO GROWS
shenit: A second time; again.
שְׁנִית
This form makes the link between being second and happening again explicit.
shenayim: Two.
שְׁנַיִם
The related number word shows the count behind “second,” while the verse’s context gives that count the feel of recurrence.
THE PATTERN
One birth follows another, carrying a family forward through successive generations.
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Because the LORD has heard that I was hated, he has therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon, Heard.So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife. And when he went in to her, the LORD gave her to conceive, and she bore a son.Now Elisabeth's time was filled for her to bring forth, and she brought forth a son.THE THREAD
And Zilpah, Leah's maidservant, bore Jacob a second son.The same phrase, “a second son,” appears again when Zilpah bears. The repeated wording brings the root’s sense of recurrence into view across two successive births.
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