What Does Genesis 46:21 Mean?
And the sons of Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard.
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 Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard.THE KEY
The Hebrew word בֵּן (ben, “son”) is linked with בָּנָה (banah, “build”), so this list reads as a household taking shape through named lives.
THE MEANING
This verse holds belonging as both shared and particular: one household is carried through a series of distinct names. The names are not a faceless total; each person has a place in the line, and the line itself is something being built.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A family line is only a number, so the people inside it are interchangeable.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
benei
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
to build or establish
“sons” in this verse is benei. The Hebrew word for “son” is traditionally linked with בָּנָה (banah, “build”). Genesis makes the connection audible when Sarah says, “I may obtain children by her” (Genesis 16:2); the Hebrew verb there means “be built.”
ALSO GROWS
ben: son; a member of a family line
בֵּן
The word for a son carries a sound and sense associated with building a household.
banah: to build or establish
בָּנָה
This verb makes the household-building association visible in Genesis 16:2.
binyan: a building or structure
בִּנְיָן
The related word for a structure echoes the way each named son belongs within a larger household.
נַעֲמָן
Naʿaman
GROWS FROM
נעם
n-ʿ-m
to be pleasant or delightful
Naaman carries the sense of pleasantness within a list that otherwise gives no description of its people. The name preserves a quality inside the family line, and the same root appears in the psalm’s words about what is pleasant among brothers.
ALSO GROWS
noʿam: pleasantness or delight
נֹעַם
It shares the root that gives Naaman its sense of pleasantness.
naʿim: pleasant or delightful
נָעִים
This is the form translated “pleasant” in Psalm 133:1, linking Naaman’s name to the psalm’s picture of brothers together.
THE PATTERN
A household’s continuity is carried forward in distinct names, not only in its headcount.
These are the births of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and sons were born to them after the flood.Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.And he gave him the covenant of circumcision, and so Abraham fathered Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac fathered Jacob, and Jacob fathered the twelve father-rulers.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees of David. Look, how good and how sweet it is for brothers to settle also together!Naaman (נַעֲמָן, Naʿaman, “pleasant one”) carries the root נעם (n-ʿ-m, “to be pleasant”), which appears in the psalm’s “pleasant.” Ehi (אֲחִי, ʾAḥi, “my brother”) stands among these names, placing pleasantness beside brotherhood, the pairing the psalm voices plainly.
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