What Does Genesis 22:12 Mean in the King James?
And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
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 verse names awe by what is not held back, yet makes the command to stop the hand equally absolute.
THE MEANING
The voice forbids the hand to touch the boy, and the same sentence says that the son has not been held back. The reader stands in the verse’s unresolved tension: the child’s life is at the edge of violence, and the command halts the act without erasing its threat.
THE ROOT
חָשַׂכְתָּ
ḥāśakhtā
GROWS FROM
חָשַׂךְ
To hold back, restrain, or spare.
“withheld” in this verse is ḥāśakhtā. The English verb can sound like a private refusal, while this root also names restraint and sparing. Here the son is not kept back, even as the voice restrains the hand.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāśakhtā: To hold back or keep from being given or done.
חָשַׂכְתָּ
The verse turns on the absence of this act: the son is not kept back.
ḥōsēkh: One who holds back or refrains.
חֹשֵׂךְ
Proverbs 10:19 uses this form for one who restrains his lips; the root reaches from holding speech back to withholding a son.
יְרֵא
yārēʾ
GROWS FROM
יָרֵא
To fear or stand in awe.
“fearest” in this verse is yārēʾ. When God is the object, this root carries awe as well as fear; its branch נוֹרָא (nôrāʾ, “awe-inspiring”) describes what inspires awe. The verse pairs that inward posture with a costly act.
ALSO GROWS
yirʾāh: Fear or reverent awe.
יִרְאָה
This noun shows the response named in the verse as an inward posture.
nôrāʾ: One who inspires awe or is held in reverence.
נוֹרָא
The same root describes both the human response and what evokes it.
יָדַעְתִּי
yādaʿtî
GROWS FROM
יָדַע
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“know” in this verse is yādaʿtî. The verb can mark recognition formed through encounter, and “now” places that recognition inside this scene. Its noun branch דַּעַת (daʿat, “knowledge, perception”) keeps knowing connected to perception, not bare information.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or recognize.
יָדַע
The verse’s “now I know” names recognition brought into view in the encounter.
daʿat: Knowledge or perception.
דַּעַת
This noun shows the root’s reach from knowing to what is perceived.
THE PATTERN
An inward allegiance becomes legible in the costly action it produces.
And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.THE THREAD
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?The Septuagint renders “withheld” here with ἐφείσω (epheisō, “you spared or held back”), from φείδομαι (pheidomai, “to spare or hold back”); Romans 8:32 uses that same Greek verb for “spared.” Romans turns the scene back on itself: the father in Genesis is told he has not spared his son, while this verse says God has not spared his own Son.
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