What Does Genesis 47:18 Mean in the King James?
When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent; my lord also hath our herds of cattle; there is not ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands:
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 year and the silver both “end” in the same Hebrew root, so the verse measures exhaustion twice before naming what remains: bodies and land.
THE MEANING
The verse exposes a brutal arithmetic: when survival rests under another’s control, money and herds can run out until only bodies and land remain. Plain disclosure does not make the exchange fair; it makes visible how hunger can turn human life and ground into terms of ownership.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that a clearly stated exchange is therefore a free one: here, hunger leaves bodies and land as the remaining terms.
THE ROOT
תִּתֹּם
titom
GROWS FROM
ת־מ־ם
t-m-m
To be complete, reach an end, or be finished.
“ended / spent” in this verse is titom. English divides the moment into a year that “ended” and silver that is “spent,” while Hebrew repeats forms of one root for both. That root also yields words for wholeness, so completion here has a hard edge: the year closes, the silver is gone, and the inventory falls to human bodies and ground.
ALSO GROWS
tamim: Whole, complete, sound.
תָּמִים
The same root can name wholeness; here its repeated forms name a year and resources brought to their limit.
tom: Completeness, integrity.
תֹּם
This branch carries the sense of a whole or complete state, sharpening the contrast with the resources that are now used up.
THE PATTERN
When scarcity empties a household’s resources, its costs can reach land, children, and freedom.
Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate.Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the LORD: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards.THE THREAD
Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate.The next verse turns this inventory into a proposal: buy the people and their land for bread. It names the result plainly, “we and our land will be servants”, so bodies and land are the terms hunger places under ownership.
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