What Does Genesis 36:11 Mean?
And the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Gatam, and Kenaz.
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 the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Gatam, and Kenaz.THE KEY
The word “sons” carries the seed of “building”: this list shows a family line taking shape through named lives.
THE MEANING
You meet five distinct names carried from one father, so the line is particular rather than anonymous. Teman carries a directional sense, “south”, and lets this family list reach beyond descent into the world of place.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
bĕnê
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
Build, establish.
The word for sons belongs to the same root as building. The genealogy is more than a record of descent: it shows a household taking shape through the lives named in it.
ALSO GROWS
ben: son
בֵּן
This is the family relation named in the verse, carrying the line from one generation into another.
bānâ: build, establish
בָּנָה
Its shared root makes the descendants part of how a household is built and continued.
binyan: building, structure
בִּנְיָן
The genealogy itself forms a structure through its named branches.
תֵּימָן
Tēmān
GROWS FROM
ימן
y-m-n
Right hand or right side, with a directional sense of south.
Teman’s name carries direction: “south” is linked with the right-hand side when facing east. A personal name can hold a place on the map within a family line.
ALSO GROWS
yāmîn: right hand, right side
יָמִין
This gives the name its directional association with the south.
tēmānî: southern, southerner
תֵּימָנִי
This related form keeps the place-direction sense carried by Teman’s name.
אוֹמָר
ʾOmār
GROWS FROM
אמר
ʾ-m-r
Say, speak.
Omar is commonly connected with the root for saying or speaking. Read beside the other names, it gives the line a voice as well as a structure.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāmar: say, speak
אָמַר
This verb is the root sense associated with Omar’s name.
ʾōmer: speech, utterance
אֹמֶר
This noun carries the root from an act of speaking into something spoken.
ʾimrāh: utterance, saying
אִמְרָה
This related word shows the root’s branch of expressed words.
THE PATTERN
A family line becomes visible through named descendants who carry inheritance forward.
And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.Look, children are the LORD's portion; and the fruit of the womb is a wage.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.The Hebrew word for “sons” (בְּנֵי, bĕnê, “sons of”) belongs to the root בנה (bānâ, “build”), the same root behind “builded” in Genesis 4:17. Here the built form is visible as a city named for a son; in Genesis 36, the line takes shape through named descendants.
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