What Does Genesis 13:17 Mean in the King James?
Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The gift is promised for the future, yet its full breadth is encountered through the present act of walking across the land.
THE MEANING
The promise meets you as a space to cross: rise and move through the land’s full reach while its giving remains in the speaker’s pledge. Its breadth is not abstract here; it is ground the addressed person is told to traverse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A promised thing need not already be in hand to be encountered as real; here its extent is traversed under a pledge of later giving.
THE ROOT
וּלְרָחְבָּהּ
u-le-rachbah
GROWS FROM
רחב
rachav
To be broad, widen, or become spacious.
The word for breadth grows from a root that also describes becoming wide or spacious. The land’s dimension is therefore more than a measurement: it carries the sense of room opening across its full extent.
ALSO GROWS
rachav: Broad, wide.
רָחָב
This adjective makes explicit the quality carried in the land’s breadth.
merchav: A broad place, an open expanse.
מֶרְחָב
The same root can name a spacious place, linking the land’s breadth with the experience of room.
הִתְהַלֵּךְ
hithallekh
GROWS FROM
הלך
halakh
To go or walk.
“walk” in this verse is hithallekh. The command describes movement through the land, not simply a view of it from afar. The promise is met on the ground, through passage across its extent.
ALSO GROWS
holekh: Going, walking; one who goes.
הוֹלֵךְ
This form keeps the verse’s focus on a person moving through the promised space.
halikhah: Walking, going.
הֲלִיכָה
The noun preserves the connection between the land and the act of traversing it.
אֶתְּנֶנָּה
ettenennah
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
To give, set, or place.
“give” in this verse is ettenennah. The pledge keeps the giver as the source of the land; its extent is not presented as something the walker makes or earns. The root also carries the sense of setting or placing, keeping gift and place close together.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun makes the giving in the verse sound like a gift rather than self-acquisition.
netinah: Giving, a bestowal.
נְתִינָה
This branch highlights the act of giving that remains attached to the land’s promise.
THE PATTERN
A promised inheritance becomes tangible through embodied presence and movement across its ground.
Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:THE THREAD
He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.The root רָחַב (rachav, “to be broad”) names the land’s breadth here and also forms מֶרְחָב (merchav, “broad place”) in Psalm 18:19. The shared root turns breadth from a measurement into room: an expanse opened after constriction.
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