What Does Genesis 47:8 Mean?
And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days of the years of your life?
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 Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?THE KEY
Beneath the question “How old art thou?” is a count of the days contained within the years of a life.
THE MEANING
A life has a span that can be counted in days and years. The question brings that lived time into view, with age attached to the reality of being alive.
THE ROOT
חַיֶּיךָ
ḥayyekha
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥayah
To live; to be alive.
The Hebrew wording names life as days nested within years, so age is a count of lived time rather than a detached label. The root keeps that count connected to being alive.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Alive; living.
חַי
This branch holds the question’s count close to the state of being alive.
ḥayyim: Life; living existence.
חַיִּים
This related form shows the shared root behind the word for life in Pharaoh’s question.
THE PATTERN
A human life is described as a span made countable in days and years.
The days of our years, in them, are seventy years, or with strength eighty years; yet their span is toil and emptiness, for it is sheared away swiftly, and we take wing.Since his days are cut, and the number of his months is with you, you set his carved limits that he cannot pass over.You do not know what tomorrow holds. For what is your life? You are a mist, showing itself for a little while, and then made unseen.THE THREAD
And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years. Few and bad have the days of the years of my life been, and they have not reached the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.Jacob answers with the same “days of the years of my life” language, using the same life-root that Pharaoh’s question contains. His reply turns the count into a span he calls a pilgrimage.
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