What Does Genesis 50:9 Mean?
And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen, and it was a very heavy camp.
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 there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls the company “heavy,” linking its great size to the same root that names glory as weight.
THE MEANING
The procession’s scale becomes tangible: chariots, horsemen, and a company described as weighty move together. A loss can gather many around the person carrying it, letting inward grief become visible in shared presence.
THE ROOT
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
K-B-D
To be heavy or weighty.
“a very heavy camp” in this verse is kaved. The Hebrew describes the company as heavy, making its greatness something felt as weight. The same root forms words for weight, honor, and glory, joining magnitude and significance in one image.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; honor or glory.
כָּבוֹד
The shared root reveals why glory can carry the sense of weight or significance.
kibbed: To honor; to give weight to.
כִּבֵּד
To honor someone is to treat them as weighty, extending the root’s image from size to regard.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes greatness tangible as weight, whether it appears as burden, presence, or glory.
You will surely wither, both you and this people with you, for this word is too heavy for you; you are not able to do it alone.So that the priests could not stand to serve because of the cloud, for the weight of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.For our light pressure, which is for a moment, works for us a heavy weight, the weight of the ages, overflowing measure upon measure.THE THREAD
You will surely wither, both you and this people with you, for this word is too heavy for you; you are not able to do it alone.The same כבד (kaved, heavy) root calls the workload too heavy for one person. Here it makes the company’s scale tangible; there it measures how much one person can bear, so size and burden emerge from the same word-seed.
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