What Does Genesis 45:7 Mean?
And God sent me before you to set for you a remnant in the land, and to keep you alive by a great escape.
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 sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.THE KEY
Being sent ahead can become the means by which a remnant remains and lives are kept.
THE MEANING
God’s sending places someone ahead for a living purpose: a remnant remains in the land, and lives are kept through a great escape. The verse speaks to you now of a sending whose fruit reaches beyond the one who goes; survival extends to a people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being sent ahead means being abandoned and cut off from your people. The verse names a sending that serves their survival.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלָחֵנִי
vayishlacheini
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send forth, dispatch, release.
Shalach carries both sending and release. Here, the one sent forth is placed ahead so that others can survive.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: Sending away, dismissal.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch carries the sense of release within the act of sending.
shaluach: One who is sent; a messenger or emissary.
שָׁלוּחַ
It shows that a sending places someone into a role for others.
שְׁאֵרִית
she'erit
GROWS FROM
שאר
sh-ʾ-r
Remain, be left over.
She’erit means a remnant or remainder, something still here. The future named in the verse is a living people remaining in the land.
ALSO GROWS
sha'ar: To remain, be left.
שָׁאַר
This verb makes the remnant’s survival audible in the root itself.
she'ar: Remainder, what is left.
שְׁאָר
It echoes the verse’s picture of preservation as a people who remain.
פְּלֵיטָה
peletah
GROWS FROM
פלט
p-l-ṭ
Escape, slip away, get out of danger.
“by a great escape” in this verse is peletah. The word translated “deliverance” is peletah, an escape. The verse pictures survival as getting out alive, with the remnant and the escape bound together.
ALSO GROWS
palat: To escape, slip away.
פָּלַט
This verb gives the deliverance its concrete movement out of danger.
palit: An escaped one, a survivor.
פָּלִיט
It names the person who remains after the escape.
THE PATTERN
A sending ahead can become the means by which a remnant survives and many lives continue.
He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant.As for you, you planned evil against me, but God planned it for good, to make it as it is this day, to keep a great people alive.And this is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me I should let none perish, but should raise it up again at the last day.THE THREAD
He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant.Psalm 105:17 repeats the pattern “sent … before them”; both forms come from שלח (shalach, send forth or release). The echo makes the placement ahead visible as part of how the remnant is preserved.
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