What Does Genesis 36:6 Mean in the King James?
And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan; and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob.
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
What the KJV calls “persons” is nefashot, living selves, so the departure carries a whole household of lives alongside its animals and possessions.
THE MEANING
A departure carries a whole lived world with it: the household’s living selves, animals, and gathered substance all move together. A change of place reshapes the shared life around the one who leaves.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that leaving changes only the traveler; the verse shows the household’s living selves, animals, and gathered goods moving too.
THE ROOT
נַפְשׁוֹת
nefashot
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
n-p-sh
Living self, life, person.
The verse says nefashot, the plural of nefesh, where the KJV says “persons”: living selves, or living souls. A verbal branch can describe being refreshed or resting, giving this word-family a reach into lived vitality as well as personhood.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living soul; living self or person.
נֶפֶשׁ
The singular names one living self; the plural here gathers the household’s members as lives, not merely as a category.
yinnāfēsh: Be refreshed; rest (Exodus 23:12).
יִנָּפֵשׁ
This verbal form shows the same word-family describing a living self at rest or restored.
יַעֲקֹב
Yaʿaqov
GROWS FROM
ע־ק־ב
ʿ-q-b
Heel; following at the heel, with the related sense of supplanting.
The text ties Jacob’s name to the heel and to supplanting. Esau’s household leaves from Jacob’s presence, setting distance against a name whose root carries the image of following closely and overtaking.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaqev: Heel; the body part Jacob is described as grasping at birth (Genesis 25:26).
עָקֵב
It gives Jacob’s name a tangible image of holding on at the heel.
ʿaqav: Follow at the heel; supplant (Genesis 27:36).
עָקַב
This verbal branch brings following closely and overtaking into Jacob’s name, coloring the verse’s phrase “from the face of his brother Jacob.”
THE PATTERN
A departure moves a connected household and its gathered world together.
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow.THE THREAD
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.Genesis 12:5 uses the same word-family, nefesh, for the living people who leave alongside gathered goods. The repeated pairing reveals the living selves as part of what a household carries when it moves.
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