What Does Genesis 15:20 Mean in the King James?
And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,
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 land named as promise is already lived in: Perizzites is linked to people of open, unwalled settlements.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into the moment when what is promised is not an empty space: named peoples already dwell there. Promise and existing claims stand together in the same frame, without the text pretending the ground is vacant.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The promise does not mean the ground is vacant or uncontested.
THE ROOT
הַפְּרִזִּי
ha-perizzi
GROWS FROM
פרז
p-r-z
An open or unwalled settlement; the root points to dwelling in open country.
The Perizzites’ name is linked to the word-family for open, unwalled settlements, giving the list a sense of lived-in ground. The land in the promise is not an abstract blank: it already has inhabitants and places of dwelling.
ALSO GROWS
perazot: Open villages or settlements without walls.
פְּרָזוֹת
This place-word gives the Perizzites’ name its association with open settlements.
perazon: Village life or rural settlements.
פְּרָזוֹן
This related word evokes the inhabited countryside that makes the promised land concrete.
THE PATTERN
Promise is spoken over ground that is already occupied, so inheritance and present conditions coexist.
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: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
And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land.Genesis 13:7 names the Perizzites again and says they dwell in the land. The repeated name makes the covenant’s landscape tangible: the people associated with open settlements are already there.
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