What Does Genesis 41:47 Mean in the King James?
And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls.
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 pictures abundance not as a number, but as the earth yielding in repeated handfuls.
THE MEANING
The earth’s fullness reaches you as something your hands can gather: it yields by handfuls. Abundance here is tangible, arriving in portions beyond a single grasp.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Abundance is not only an idea or a distant promise; here it is provision you can hold.
THE ROOT
קְמָצִים
qəmāṣîm
GROWS FROM
קמץ
q-m-ṣ
To grasp with a closed hand, or take a handful.
The word measures the harvest by what a hand can grasp. The earth yields in repeated handfuls, making abundance something touchable rather than abstract.
ALSO GROWS
qāmaṣ: To take a handful or grasp with a closed hand.
קָמַץ
This verb reveals the hand-shaped action behind the measure in the verse.
qōmeṣ: A handful or fistful.
קֹמֶץ
This noun appears for the handful of meal in 1 Kings 17:12, where the same measure marks scarcity rather than abundance.
הַשָּׂבָע
haśśāḇāʿ
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
ś-b-ʿ
To be satisfied or filled to fullness.
“plenteous” in this verse is haśśāḇāʿ. The word for plenty carries the sense of being filled or satisfied. The phrase also places seven (שֶׁבַע, shevaʿ) beside fullness (שָׂבָע, savaʿ): their consonant letters echo one another, though their distinct sibilants mean they are not the same root.
ALSO GROWS
śāḇēaʿ: Satisfied or full.
שָׂבֵעַ
It shows that the plenty named here is fullness that reaches a state of being satisfied.
śōḇaʿ: Satisfaction or abundance.
שֹׂבַע
This noun makes explicit the fullness contained in the verse’s word for plenteous years.
THE PATTERN
Provision becomes visible in gathered portions: enough for each, and sometimes more than enough.
And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.THE THREAD
And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.The “handful” here belongs to the same קֹמֶץ (qōmeṣ, handful) word family as the handfuls in Genesis. In Genesis the earth yields by repeated handfuls; here one handful is all the widow has, so the shared measure makes abundance and scarcity visible in the same unit.
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