What Does Genesis 41:31 Mean in the King James?
And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.
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
Famine can make fullness unrecognizable without making the fullness unreal.
THE MEANING
Your present field of perception can be so filled by lack that earlier fullness becomes difficult to recognize. This verse names more than an empty storehouse: it says the famine’s weight eclipses the lived knowledge of plenty. What scarcity hides from perception is not thereby made unreal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that if you cannot recognize fullness now, it must never have been real. The verse locates that blindness in famine’s force, not in the nonexistence of the plenty.
THE ROOT
הַשָּׂבָע
haśśābāʿ
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
ś-b-ʿ
To be sated; to reach fullness.
The word for plenty carries the sense of being full and having enough. The famine threatens not only stored goods but the lived sense of fullness.
ALSO GROWS
śāvaʿ: To be sated or satisfied.
שָׂבַע
This verb shows that the verse’s plenty is fullness experienced, not merely an abstract surplus.
śāvēaʿ: Sated, satisfied, full.
שָׂבֵעַ
The same root describes a person who is full, so famine reverses the state of having enough.
יִוָּדַע
yiwwādaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
“known” in this verse is yiwwādaʿ. The verse says the plenty will not be recognized or experienced as real under the famine. Its existence and its felt presence come apart: fullness can be there in the story while scarcity covers it from perception.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
יָדַע
This verb connects knowing with lived recognition, clarifying how famine can make prior fullness inaccessible to experience.
daʿat: Knowledge or perception.
דַּעַת
This noun names the realm of knowing that famine eclipses in the verse.
כָּבֵד
kāvēd
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
“grievous” in this verse is kāvēd. The famine is called heavy, giving its severity the sense of weight pressing over perception. Its force is what makes the prior fullness so difficult to know.
ALSO GROWS
kāvōd: Weight or weightiness.
כָּבוֹד
This branch makes the verse’s severity concrete as weight pressing down on what can be perceived.
hikhbīd: To make heavy or press down.
הִכְבִּיד
This form sharpens the image of famine’s weight covering the fullness that came before it.
THE PATTERN
What dominates present perception can conceal another reality, whether scarcity hides former fullness or comfort hides present need.
And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:THE THREAD
For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.Genesis says the plenty will not be known under famine; Hosea uses the same Hebrew root ידע (y-d-ʿ, know or perceive) when provision is present but its giver is unrecognized. The shared root makes perception the hinge: famine can cover abundance, and abundance can be received without being known.
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