What Does Genesis 47:4 Mean?
They said again to Pharaoh, We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for the flocks of your servants, for the hunger is heavy in the land of Canaan. Now then, we ask you, let your servants settle in the land of Goshen.
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
They said moreover unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land are we come; for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen.THE KEY
The verse lets a person be passing through and still need a place where life can settle.
THE MEANING
You can be in a season of passage and still need a place to dwell. The need is specific: there is no pasture for the flocks, and famine weighs on the land, so the request names a place, Goshen. Temporary presence does not make the need for shelter less real.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that being in transit cancels the need for a place to settle.
THE ROOT
לָגוּר
lagur
GROWS FROM
גור
gur
To sojourn or live in a place as a newcomer.
The verb לָגוּר (lagur, to sojourn) shares its root with גֵּר (ger, a sojourner or resident outsider). The root holds newcomer status inside the act of living somewhere: they can ask to dwell in Goshen without ceasing to be sojourners.
ALSO GROWS
ger: Sojourner; resident outsider.
גֵּר
This branch names the person who lives in a place without being native to it, echoing how the speakers describe themselves.
megurim: Sojournings; places or periods of residence.
מְגוּרִים
This branch carries the same root into the places and spans of a sojourner’s life.
לָשֶׁבֶת
lashevet
GROWS FROM
ישב
yashav
To sit, remain, settle, or dwell.
The request shifts from גּוּר (gur, to sojourn) to יָשַׁב (yashav, to dwell or settle). The two roots let temporary status and the desire for a located life exist together.
ALSO GROWS
yoshev: One who sits, remains, or dwells.
יֹשֵׁב
The root can describe a person occupying a place, bringing the request for Goshen down to the reality of living there.
moshav: Dwelling place; settlement.
מוֹשָׁב
This branch makes the root’s movement toward settled habitation visible in the place they ask to inhabit.
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
The famine is called כָּבֵד (kaved, heavy), giving scarcity the feel of weight pressing on the land. Its cognate כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight or weightiness) keeps that physical sense alive in a word also associated with honor.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; weightiness; honor.
כָּבוֹד
This familiar branch carries the root’s sense of weight into the language of what has significance or honor.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
The verb shows how the root’s physical sense of weight extends to giving someone or something importance.
THE PATTERN
A person can inhabit a place while remaining a sojourner there.
And there was hunger in the land, and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the hunger was heavy in the land.And it came to be in the days when the judges judged, that there was hunger in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the field of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.By trust he dwelt alongside in the land of promise, as in another's land, settling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise.THE THREAD
And he said to Abram, Perceive this surely. Your seed will be a sojourner in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will bend them low four hundred years.The word גֵּר (ger, sojourner or resident outsider) comes from the same root גור (gur, to sojourn) as the word for their arrival here. The shared root holds newcomer status inside the act of living in another land, even as they ask to dwell in Goshen.
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