What Does Genesis 35:11 Mean?
And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Bear fruit, and multiply. A nation and an assembly of nations shall be from you, and kings shall come out of your loins.
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 God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;THE KEY
The verse maps an expansion: fruitfulness multiplies until one line becomes a gathered company of peoples, and kings emerge from that same lineage.
THE MEANING
You see the promise widen in a deliberate sequence: life bears fruit, multiplies, becomes a nation and then a gathered company of nations. Kings emerge from the same line, joining embodied descent to public leadership across generations. The horizon reaches beyond one household.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that one household can yield only one people is undone: this promise holds a gathered company of nations and kings within one line.
THE ROOT
קְהַל
qehál
GROWS FROM
קהל
q-h-l
to gather or assemble as a community
Company translates qahal, a gathered assembly: the promise is not only that one line becomes numerous, but that peoples form a collective. Paired with a nation, it widens toward a gathering of peoples before it names kings.
ALSO GROWS
qahal: assembly, congregation
קָהָל
This noun makes clear that the company is a gathered people, not only a count of separate nations.
haqhel: assemble, gather together
הַקְהֵל
The verb shows the action inside the noun: people are brought together into an assembly.
פְּרֵה
perēh
GROWS FROM
פרה
p-r-h
to bear fruit; become fruitful
“bear fruit” in this verse is perēh. The root begins with fruit-bearing, the production of living increase. In this verse that fruitfulness opens into lineage, so its reach extends beyond the life in which it begins.
ALSO GROWS
perî: fruit, produce
פְּרִי
Fruit is the tangible result of the same root’s bearing; the verse’s fruitfulness becomes generational life.
hiphrāh: made fruitful, caused to bear fruit
הִפְרָה
This causative form shows the same root carrying fruitfulness forward into further increase.
וּרְבֵה
u-revēh
GROWS FROM
רבה
r-b-h
to increase, grow numerous, multiply
“multiply” in this verse is u-revēh. The two commands distinguish bearing fruit from becoming many: one generates, the other amplifies. The verse presents increase as a movement from fruitfulness toward a scale large enough to form a company of peoples.
ALSO GROWS
arbeh: I will multiply
אַרְבֶּה
This form repeats the same root in the promise of increase, linking multiplication to the widening of a lineage.
harbeh: greatly; in abundance
הַרְבֵּה
This related form carries the root’s sense of increase at scale, illuminating the movement from one line toward many peoples.
THE PATTERN
Fruitfulness in one lineage widens into a people and then a gathering that reaches across generations.
And I will make you bear fruit exceedingly, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come out of you.You are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, In your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed.After this I see, and look, a great crowd that no one can number, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, wrapped in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.THE THREAD
And I will make you bear fruit exceedingly, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come out of you.The same fruitfulness root, פרה (parah), links the two promises, and both widen one lineage into nations and kings. Beside this verse, the earlier promise makes the pattern visible: fruitfulness grows into a people and carries authority across generations.
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