What Does Genesis 35:17 Mean in the King James?
And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.
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 promise of life arrives within the hard labor, before the strain has ended.
THE MEANING
The midwife’s words meet a hard passage while it is still underway: fear and the promise of a son occupy the same moment. The verse holds strain and emergence together without pretending the strain is over.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that severe struggle means nothing living can emerge: the promise is spoken before the labor is over.
THE ROOT
בְּלִדְתָּהּ
bəlidtāh
GROWS FROM
ילד
to bear, beget, bring forth
“giving birth” in this verse is bəlidtāh. The root that names the act of bearing also names the child and the generations that come from birth. English separates labor from lineage; Hebrew keeps the bringing-forth and what is brought forth within one root.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: to bear, beget
יָלַד
This is the root verb beneath the word for Rachel’s giving birth.
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The same root names both the act of birth and the child brought forth.
toledot: generations; what is begotten
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The root extends the moment of birth into the generations that follow.
בֵּן
ben
GROWS FROM
בנה
to build
The consonants of בֵּן (ben, “son”) echo בָּנָה (banah, “build”), and the word for son is traditionally linked to this root. The promised son “also” carries the sense of a life that builds a household onward.
ALSO GROWS
banah: to build, build up
בָּנָה
This root gives the wordplay that links a son with the building of a family line.
boneh: builder; one who builds
בֹּנֶה
This form makes the building image active, echoing the son as one who carries a household forward.
ben: son
בֵּן
The verse’s promised son is heard alongside the root’s image of building and continuation.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents birth-pain as a threshold where life emerges while the pain is still real.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin.The next verse makes the cost explicit: Rachel’s נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “living soul”) is departing, and she names him בֶּן־אוֹנִי (Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow”). Jacob names him בִּנְיָמִין (Binyamin, “son of the right hand”), so the same birth holds her grief and the child’s continuation together without erasing her death.
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