What Does Genesis 33:13 Mean in the King James?
And he said unto him, My lord knoweth that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me: and if men should overdrive them one day, all the flock will die.
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
This verse makes tenderness the measure of speed: push beyond what life can bear, and motion becomes death.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the reader’s attention on what is young and carrying life: the children are tender, and the flocks include young. Their survival depends on a pace that matches that tenderness. When they are driven beyond it, the whole flock can die.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a faster pace is always harmless or productive: pushing tender life too hard can turn movement into death.
THE ROOT
רַכִּים
rakkim
GROWS FROM
רכך
r-k-k
Softness, tenderness; becoming soft or faint.
English gives “tender” as a trait of the children, but this root also describes a heart becoming soft or faint. It holds delicacy and vulnerability together: the danger here is not movement itself, but a pace that ignores what is still tender.
ALSO GROWS
rakh: Tender, soft, delicate.
רַךְ
This form names the children’s condition here and shows that tenderness is a real limit, not an abstract quality.
yerakh: May become faint or soft, as of the heart.
יֵרַךְ
The related verb in Deuteronomy 20:3 describes a heart losing firmness, extending the root’s sense from physical delicacy to inner vulnerability.
THE PATTERN
Life is sustained when the one leading adapts the pace to the vulnerability of those being led.
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children:THE THREAD
And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it.Genesis 18:7 uses רַךְ (rakh, tender) for the calf Abraham brings. The shared root connects the calf’s delicacy with the children’s and young-bearing flock’s vulnerability here, giving “tender” real bodily stakes.
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