What Does Genesis 35:17 Mean?
And it came to pass, when she was hardened in her birthing, that the midwife said to her, Do not fear, you shall have this son also.
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 it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.THE KEY
The promise of life arrives within the hard labor, before the strain has ended.
THE MEANING
The midwife’s words meet a hard passage while it is still underway: fear and the promise of a son occupy the same moment. The verse holds strain and emergence together without pretending the strain is over.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that severe struggle means nothing living can emerge: the promise is spoken before the labor is over.
THE ROOT
בְּלִדְתָּהּ
bəlidtāh
GROWS FROM
ילד
to bear, beget, bring forth
“hardened in her birthing” in this verse is bəlidtāh. The root that names the act of bearing also names the child and the generations that come from birth. English separates labor from lineage; Hebrew keeps the bringing-forth and what is brought forth within one root.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: to bear, beget
יָלַד
This is the root verb beneath the word for Rachel’s giving birth.
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The same root names both the act of birth and the child brought forth.
toledot: generations; what is begotten
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The root extends the moment of birth into the generations that follow.
בֵּן
ben
GROWS FROM
בנה
to build
The consonants of בֵּן (ben, “son”) echo בָּנָה (banah, “build”), and the word for son is traditionally linked to this root. The promised son “also” carries the sense of a life that builds a household onward.
ALSO GROWS
banah: to build, build up
בָּנָה
This root gives the wordplay that links a son with the building of a family line.
boneh: builder; one who builds
בֹּנֶה
This form makes the building image active, echoing the son as one who carries a household forward.
ben: son
בֵּן
The verse’s promised son is heard alongside the root’s image of building and continuation.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents birth-pain as a threshold where life emerges while the pain is still real.
To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and your conceiving. In pain you shall bring forth children, and your reaching shall be toward your husband, and he shall rule over you.A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, as her living soul was going out, for she died, that she called his name Benoni, son of my bowing low. And his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand.The next verse makes the cost explicit: Rachel’s נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “living soul”) is departing, and she names him בֶּן־אוֹנִי (Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow”). Jacob names him בִּנְיָמִין (Binyamin, “son of the right hand”), so the same birth holds her grief and the child’s continuation together without erasing her death.
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