What Does Genesis 37:24 Mean?
And they took him and threw him into a pit, and the pit was empty, there were no waters in it.
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 they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.THE KEY
The pit is named as an empty hollow, then its emptiness is made unmistakable: there is no water in it.
THE MEANING
A person can be confined where sustaining provision is absent, and the verse names that deprivation plainly. Joseph is thrown into a pit; its emptiness is made concrete by the absence of water.
THE ROOT
בּוֹר
bor
GROWS FROM
ב־ו־ר
b-w-r
To dig out or hollow; the image is an excavated space.
“pit” in this verse is bor. The same Hebrew word can name a cistern or a dungeon: it is the hollow itself, while what it holds determines whether it stores water or confines someone. Here the verse says the hollow is empty, then specifies that it holds no water.
ALSO GROWS
bor: Cistern, a hollow for storing water.
בּוֹר
It shows the pit can be a container meant to hold provision; here, that provision is absent.
bor: Pit or dungeon, a hollow used for confinement.
בּוֹר
It shows how the same hollow becomes a place of confinement, as it does for Joseph.
רֵק
req
GROWS FROM
ר־י־ק
r-y-q
To be empty or to empty out.
The root extends emptiness beyond a container: related forms can describe being empty-handed or something done in vain. The pit’s lack is therefore stated as a condition, not left as an impression.
ALSO GROWS
reqam: Empty-handed; without gain.
רֵיקָם
It carries emptiness from a hollow space into the absence of anything received or gained.
riq: Emptiness; in vain.
רִיק
It shows the root can name emptiness as a broader state, echoing the deprivation made explicit in the pit.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the waterless pit as a place of real confinement, and also as a place from which people can be brought out.
Then they took Jeremiah and threw him into the pit of Malchiah the king's son, which was in the courtyard of the prison, and they lowered Jeremiah with cords. In the pit there were no waters, only mud, and Jeremiah sank into the mud.He lifts me out of a roaring pit, out of the clinging mud, and sets my feet on rock, and sets my steps firm.You also, by the blood of your covenant, I have sent forth your bound ones from a pit with no waters in it.THE THREAD
You also, by the blood of your covenant, I have sent forth your bound ones from a pit with no waters in it.Zechariah uses the same word בּוֹר (bor, pit or cistern) and repeats the detail that there is no water in it. It pairs the pit with שִׁלַּחְתִּי (shillachti, “I have sent forth”), from שָׁלַח (shalach, send or release), linking this waterless enclosure with the act of sending prisoners out.
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