What Does Genesis 32:20 Mean in the King James?
And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of 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 word translated “appease” means “cover”: Jacob sends a gift ahead as a covering before he risks meeting Esau face to face.
THE MEANING
You can feel the pull to send something ahead of yourself, a gift, an explanation, a performance, so the first meeting feels safer. This verse names that move as covering: what you send may shape the encounter, but it cannot guarantee that the other person will lift your face in welcome.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the right offering can make another person’s acceptance certain. Jacob can send the gift forward; he cannot control the face that receives him.
THE ROOT
אֲכַפְּרָה
akhapperah
GROWS FROM
כפר
k-p-r
Cover, spread a covering over; here, the covering carries the sense of appeasing.
“appease” in this verse is akhapperah. Jacob says, “I will cover”: the present goes ahead of him as a buffer before face-to-face exposure. Other branches of this root name a ransom and the cover over the ark, keeping a concrete image beneath the social act of appeasing: something placed over or in front.
ALSO GROWS
kofer: A covering price or ransom.
כֹּפֶר
This branch shows how a gift can serve as a covering laid down before an encounter, as Jacob hopes his present will.
kapporet: The cover over the ark.
כַּפֹּרֶת
The root remains concrete: a covering placed over what is within, echoing the image beneath “appease.”
kippur: Covering; the term commonly rendered “atonement.”
כִּפּוּר
This branch keeps the image of covering present in a word often heard as an abstract religious idea.
יִשָּׂא פָנָי
yissa panai
GROWS FROM
נשא
n-ś-ʾ
Lift, carry, or bear.
“accept of me” in this verse is yissa panai. The Hebrew phrase is literally, “perhaps he will lift my face.” English makes acceptance sound like a judgment, while the Hebrew gives it a bodily image: another person has the power to raise your face in welcome. The gift may shape the approach, but it cannot guarantee that response.
ALSO GROWS
nasa panim: Lift the face; show favor.
נָשָׂא פָנִים
This idiom makes Jacob’s hope vivid: he hopes Esau will lift his face rather than turn away from him.
nose avon: Bear crookedness; pardon or carry away guilt.
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
The same verb can describe bearing a burden, linking acceptance with a lifting that changes how a person is held or seen.
THE PATTERN
A gift can shape the approach to a difficult encounter, but it cannot substitute for the encounter itself.
A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.A gift in secret pacifieth anger: and a reward in the bosom strong wrath.Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.THE THREAD
Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.The Hebrew of Genesis 6:14 uses the same כפר root in the verb and noun translated “pitch”: to cover, with a covering. There, the covering seals a vessel against water; in Jacob’s words, it becomes the image of a gift sent ahead of a feared meeting.
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