What Does Genesis 31:41 Mean in the King James?
Thus have I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle: and thou hast changed my wages ten times.
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 sentence names the harm of labor whose terms keep being replaced by the person who controls them.
THE MEANING
Your labor can be real and long while the agreement around it keeps shifting. This verse names the strain of working under terms repeatedly rewritten by the one with power over the agreement. Years of service do not make a moving agreement fair.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that long service proves an arrangement is fair: years worked do not erase repeated changes to the agreed wages.
THE ROOT
וַתַּחֲלֵף
wattachalef
GROWS FROM
חלף
To pass, change, or replace.
The root behind “changed” also appears in words for a change of garments and for strength being renewed. Here, the wage terms keep being replaced, and the shared root holds that repeated alteration together.
ALSO GROWS
ḥalifot: Changes or changes of garments.
חֲלִיפוֹת
Judges 14:12 uses this word for changes of clothing; the same root names one thing being exchanged for another.
yaḥalifu: They renew or exchange; in Isaiah 40:31, “they shall renew their strength.”
יַחֲלִיפוּ
The root can describe replacement that restores strength as well as change that alters terms, showing how much its meaning depends on what is being exchanged.
עֲבַדְתִּיךָ
avadeticha
GROWS FROM
עבד
To work, labor, or serve.
“Served” belongs to the same root as the words for a servant and for labor or service. The word family holds both the work being done and the service relationship around it, keeping the labor and its unequal terms in view together.
ALSO GROWS
eved: Servant or slave.
עֶבֶד
This noun from the same root names the person in a service relationship, giving “served” a relational weight beyond simply doing a task.
avodah: Work, labor, or service.
עֲבֹדָה
This branch names the work itself, linking the years of service in the verse to the labor being exchanged for wages.
THE PATTERN
A worker’s due is not at the employer’s whim: Scripture names withheld or repeatedly changed wages as injustice.
And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me.Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me.“Changed” comes from חלף (ḥalaph), the same root used in this verse for wages being repeatedly altered. Genesis 31:7 names the pattern directly: the wage terms keep being replaced, and the changes do not go unseen.
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