What Does Genesis 31:15 Mean?
Are we not counted by him as strangers? For he has sold us, and he has eaten up even our silver.
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
Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money.THE KEY
“Counted strangers” names the injury precisely: someone who should recognize you as kin can reckon you as an outsider while consuming what is yours.
THE MEANING
A relationship can deny the bond within it: you are counted as an outsider by someone who should recognize you as kin. The verse names the material injury too, you are sold, and what is yours is consumed, so dispossession cannot be hidden beneath family language.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being related guarantees you are treated as kin, or that what family takes from you is not real dispossession.
THE ROOT
נֶחְשַׁבְנוּ
neḥshavnu
GROWS FROM
ח־שׁ־ב
ḥ-sh-b
Think, reckon, calculate.
“counted” in this verse is neḥshavnu. The same root gives words for thought and for an account or calculation. The sisters’ claim is that being treated as strangers is a reckoning made about them: their standing in the relationship is being calculated as though they do not belong.
ALSO GROWS
machashavah: Thought, plan
מַחֲשָׁבָה
The root links a person’s reckoning to the thought or plan behind it.
ḥeshbon: Account, calculation
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
This branch makes the accounting in “counted” concrete: the verse exposes how their standing is being assessed.
נָכְרִיּוֹת
nokhriyyot
GROWS FROM
נ־כ־ר
n-k-r
Mark as foreign or distinct; recognize as other.
“strangers” in this verse is nokhriyyot. The word belongs to a family that includes both the foreigner and the act of recognizing or identifying. The sting is exact: they are marked as people who do not belong.
ALSO GROWS
nokhri: Foreigner, outsider
נָכְרִי
This is the same family as the word used for the sisters’ status in the verse.
hikkir: Recognize, identify
הִכִּיר
The contrast sharpens the wound: the relationship that should recognize them as kin instead marks them as foreign.
וַיֹּאכַל
vayyo'khal
GROWS FROM
א־כ־ל
ʾ-k-l
Eat, consume.
The verb keeps the image physical: their money is described as eaten up, absorbed like food. The verse joins exclusion from the relationship to the consumption of what is theirs.
ALSO GROWS
okhel: Food
אֹכֶל
The shared root makes the image of their money being eaten literal in its language.
ma'akhal: Food, provision
מַאֲכָל
This branch connects the act of consuming to what sustains someone, underscoring what is taken from them.
THE PATTERN
To be counted is to be assigned a standing, and the reckoning exposes the judgment doing the assigning.
And he leaned his weight on the LORD, and he counted it to him as alignment.And it was counted to him for alignment, for generation and generation, to the ages.For what does the scripture say? Abraham leaned his full weight on God, and it was counted to him for alignment.THE THREAD
And he leaned his weight on the LORD, and he counted it to him as alignment.“Counted” in both verses comes from ח־שׁ־ב (ḥ-sh-b), meaning to think or reckon. Here, the sisters say Laban’s reckoning makes them strangers; in Genesis 15:6, the same root assigns Abraham a different standing.
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