What Does Genesis 15:11 Mean in the King James?
And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.
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 verb translated “drove” carries the image of making the birds blow away: Abram answers what descends by setting it in motion out.
THE MEANING
When something exposed is threatened, the threat is real, yet the scene shows Abram driving the descending birds away. Vulnerability does not make what is threatened already lost; danger and resistance appear together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that anything exposed to a threat is already beyond protection.
THE ROOT
וַיַּשֵּׁב
vayyashshev
GROWS FROM
נשב
nashav
to blow; to cause something to blow away
The verb translated “drove” comes from a root meaning “to blow,” and its causative form pictures Abram making the birds blow away. The same form elsewhere describes wind set in motion, revealing a shared image of force that disperses what has come near.
ALSO GROWS
vayyashshev: he caused them to blow away; he drove them off
וַיַּשֵּׁב
Here the blowing-away image names Abram’s response to the birds descending on the carcasses.
yashshev: he causes [the wind] to blow
יַשֵּׁב
In Psalm 147:18 the same root describes wind set in motion, making the dispersing force in Abram’s action visible.
THE PATTERN
A threat approaching what is vulnerable can meet a response that interrupts its power to consume.
And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.THE THREAD
He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.The verb behind “drove” in Genesis shares its root with “causeth his wind to blow” in this psalm. In one verse Abram drives away what descends; in the other, wind is set in motion and the waters flow.
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