What Does Genesis 30:18 Mean in the King James?
And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.
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 child’s name grows from “hire,” turning Leah’s word for reward into a name that lasts.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of what happens when an arrival is read through exchange: what comes to you is joined to what you have given. Issachar’s name keeps that reading inside the word itself, so the name carries meaning rather than serving as a label alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A name is only a label, detached from the meaning you see in what has been given and received.
THE ROOT
שְׂכָרִי
sekhari
GROWS FROM
שׂכר
sakar
To hire; wages or recompense.
The same root holds hiring and recompense together. Leah’s שְׂכָרִי (sekhari, my hire) echoes in יִשָּׂשכָר (Yissakhar, Issachar), so the name carries her interpretation of the child as recompense.
ALSO GROWS
sakar: Wages or reward.
שָׂכָר
This is the noun echoed in Leah’s word for “my hire” and in the name Issachar.
sakhir: A hired worker.
שָׂכִיר
The hired worker shows the root’s link between service given and recompense received.
sakar: To hire or pay wages.
שָׂכַר
The verb makes the exchange explicit: this root can name both the act of hiring and its reward.
THE PATTERN
Scripture’s reward language relates what is received to what is given, valued, or endured.
At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.THE THREAD
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.Psalm 127:3 uses שָׂכָר (sakar, reward), the same root heard in שְׂכָרִי (sekhari, my hire) and in the name יִשָּׂשכָר (Yissakhar, Issachar). The shared root makes the name sound like Leah’s reading of what she has received: recompense.
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