What Does Genesis 47:9 Mean in the King James?
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
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
Jacob calls his years a sojourning: life is passage through time, not ground he can hold permanently.
THE MEANING
Your years pass as a sojourning: life is lived in passage through time. Jacob sets his 130 years beside his fathers’ longer spans and calls his days few and harsh, leaving both finitude and hardship plainly named.
THE ROOT
מְגוּרַי
meguray
GROWS FROM
גור
gur
To sojourn or dwell as a stranger.
“pilgrimage” in this verse is meguray. Meguray means “my sojournings,” carrying the sense of dwelling as a stranger. Applied to his years, it makes a lifetime a passage through temporary dwellings.
ALSO GROWS
ger: Sojourner; resident alien.
גֵּר
It shows the root’s sense of living in a place without being native to it.
magur: Sojourning; dwelling.
מָגוּר
It names the condition of sojourning itself, close to Jacob’s word for his years.
רָעִים
ra’im
GROWS FROM
רעע
raʿaʿ
To be bad, cause harm, or afflict.
The word retains its force of evil or badness, with a range that includes what is harmful and distressing. Applied to days, it describes the hardship of a life.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil, harmful.
רַע
This adjective names the adverse quality Jacob gives to his days.
rōaʿ: Badness; distress or misery.
רֹעַ
This noun shows how the root can describe hardship as an experienced condition.
יַעֲקֹב
Yaʿaqov
GROWS FROM
עקב
ʿaqav
Heel; to follow at the heel or supplant.
“Jacob” in this verse is Yaʿaqov. The name carries the image of grasping a heel and following close behind. Here the named speaker describes his own life as sojourning, placing that image beside a life understood as passage.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaqev: Heel.
עָקֵב
It is the bodily image associated with Jacob’s name.
ʿaqav: To follow at the heel; to supplant.
עָקַב
It gives the name an active sense of coming close behind or grasping after another.
THE PATTERN
Human life is a finite sojourn, measured in years whose hardships stand within a lineage larger than one lifetime.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.THE THREAD
Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.The word rendered “pilgrimage” in both verses comes from גור (gur), “to sojourn.” Psalm 119 calls the place of sojourning a house filled with songs, so the passing years can also be a place one inhabits.
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