What Does Genesis 38:29 Mean in the King James?
And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez.
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
Pharez is named from the very breach that marks his entrance.
THE MEANING
The hand withdraws, and the brother who seemed second breaks into the expected order; his name keeps the rupture of his arrival visible. The verse speaks now wherever an arrival comes through an opening that feels like disruption: the breach and the arrival are bound together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that an arrival that disrupts the expected order has no place: here the breach itself becomes part of the child’s name.
THE ROOT
פָּרַצְתָּ
pāraṣtā
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ץ
parats
To break through, burst out, or make a breach.
The verse stacks the same root: “broken forth” is pāraṣtā, “breach” is perets, and Pharez is named from that word. What English renders as an action, an opening in the boundary, and a person’s name are one Hebrew sound-family: his arrival carries its breach openly.
ALSO GROWS
perets: A breach, bursting out, or outbreak; the word behind the name Pharez.
פֶּרֶץ
The noun names the rupture in the same breath as the verb describes the child breaking forth.
parats: To break through or spread outward.
פָּרַץ
The same verb appears in Genesis 28:14 as “spread abroad,” extending the image from one birth to life opening outward.
THE PATTERN
Life becomes visible through the very pressure or boundary that seems to contain it.
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.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.THE THREAD
But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.The Hebrew verb rendered “grew” here is יִפְרֹץ (yifrotz, “breaks through”), from the same root as Pharez and “broken forth.” The name opens into a recurring scriptural image: life making its way outward through a boundary that seeks to contain it.
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