What Does Genesis 43:1 Mean in the King James?

And the famine was sore in the land.

Genesis 43:1 · KJV

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 famine is called “heavy”: scarcity is a weight laid across the land, not simply an individual’s lack.

THE MEANING

Scarcity can weigh across the whole ground of life, not simply appear as one person’s private lack. The verse gives that pressure a concrete shape: hunger is heavy in the land.

THE ROOT

כָּבֵד

kaved

GROWS FROM

כבד

k-b-d

To be heavy or weighty; to carry weight.

English “sore” conveys severity, while ⁨כָּבֵד⁩ (kaved, heavy) makes the famine a weight pressing across the land. The same root gives ⁨כָּבוֹד⁩ (kavod, weight or honor), so the verse’s severity has the texture of something that bears down.

ALSO GROWS

kavod: Weight, honor; often rendered “glory.”

כָּבוֹד

This branch keeps weight inside the word for glory, echoing how the famine’s pressure settles over the land.

kibbed: To honor, treat as weighty.

כִּבֵּד

The root’s sense of weight extends to what is regarded as carrying weight, linking physical pressure with significance.

THE PATTERN

Scripture pictures famine as a weight that can spread across a land and shape life far beyond one household.

And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.

Genesis 12:10 · KJVThe famine is again called grievous in the land, using the same Hebrew root for heaviness.

And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.

Genesis 41:31 · KJVHere the famine’s weight is so great that the land’s abundance is no longer known.

And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar.

Acts 11:28 · KJVThe scarcity reaches across the world, showing how famine can press beyond any one household or place.

THE THREAD

And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.

Genesis 41:31 · KJV

Both verses describe famine through ⁨כבד⁩ (kaved, heavy), making scarcity a weight, not only a count of missing food. Genesis 41:31 adds that abundance can cease to be recognized beneath that pressure.

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