What Does Genesis 46:27 Mean in the King James?
And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.
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 household’s seventy is counted in nefesh, living souls, so the number is made of whole lives.
THE MEANING
You are a living soul within the people you belong to, not an abstract unit. The verse holds Joseph’s two sons within the seventy, showing how a household’s total is made of individual lives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that belonging to a larger whole makes your life interchangeable.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nefesh
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
n-p-sh
The verbal root means to refresh oneself; the noun names a living person or being.
“souls” in this verse is nefesh. Here nefesh is countable because it names a living person: two sons, then seventy lives in one household. Its verbal branch naphash means “to refresh oneself,” linking the name of a person to life renewed.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: A living soul, person, or being.
נֶפֶשׁ
The verse counts each member of the household as a whole living person.
naphash: To refresh oneself; to recover.
נָפַשׁ
This verbal form keeps the root’s sense near life renewed.
nefashot: Living souls or persons; the plural form of nefesh.
נְפָשׁוֹת
The plural form makes clear how the household’s number gathers many individual lives.
THE PATTERN
Scripture counts a people through living persons, so a total names lives held together rather than an abstraction.
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.Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.THE THREAD
Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.Deuteronomy names the same seventy as nefesh, the living persons counted here. Then it sets that small number beside a people made as numerous as the stars, letting the count open into growth.
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