What Does Genesis 35:14 Mean in the King James?
And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.
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 Hebrew calls the drink offering by the same root as “he poured”: the gift is named as the outpouring itself.
THE MEANING
An encounter with the divine takes a place you can point to: a stone marker, with oil and a poured offering upon it. The Hebrew names the drink offering from the same root as the act of pouring it, making the offering an outpouring made visible. Speech becomes a marker in the shared world.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an encounter with God must remain inward or invisible; here, speech has a place, a stone marker, and poured matter.
THE ROOT
וַיַּסֵּךְ
vayyasekh
GROWS FROM
נסך
To pour out, especially as a libation.
The verb וַיַּסֵּךְ (vayyasekh, he poured) and the noun נֶסֶךְ (nesekh, libation) grow from the same three consonants. English separates action and offering, while Hebrew names the offering through the act that gives it form.
ALSO GROWS
nasakh: To pour out; to pour as a libation.
נָסַךְ
This is the verbal form behind the pouring named in the verse.
nesekh: A poured offering, or libation.
נֶסֶךְ
The offering shares the verb’s root, so it is named as what has been poured.
אֶבֶן
even
GROWS FROM
אבן
Stone; a building stone.
The spelling אבן (even, stone) also carries the name-pattern אָב (av, father) and בֵּן (ben, son), with ב shared between them. The stone marker holds father and son together in its name.
ALSO GROWS
avanim: Stones.
אֲבָנִים
The plural keeps the three consonants אבן, carrying the same stone-word into multiple stones.
avnei: Stones of; stone in a construct phrase.
אַבְנֵי
This construct form retains the same consonants in phrases where stone is joined to what follows.
שֶׁמֶן
shemen
GROWS FROM
שמן
To be fat or rich; richness and fatness.
Oil shares its three consonants with שָׁמֵן (shamen, fat or rich). The language links the oil poured here with richness and abundance, so the marker is visibly saturated with more than an anonymous liquid.
ALSO GROWS
shamen: Fat, rich, or abundant.
שָׁמֵן
The adjective shares the oil’s root and gives it an association with richness.
mishmannim: Rich foods or delicacies.
מִשְׁמַנִּים
This word carries the same consonants into the idea of rich provision.
THE PATTERN
An encounter with the divine takes visible form through material gestures that mark a place or a person.
And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.THE THREAD
And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.At Bethel, Jacob earlier sets up a stone pillar and pours oil on it; the same Hebrew word שֶׁמֶן (shemen, oil) appears in both passages. Genesis 35 returns to that marker and adds the libation, whose name shares its root with the act of pouring.
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