What Does Numbers 1:13 Mean in the King James?

Of Asher; Pagiel the son of Ocran.

Numbers 1:13 · 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

This one-line census holds a human range in its names: Asher carries flourishing, Pagiel encounter with God, and Ocran trouble.

THE MEANING

You are more than a place in a count: your name and relationships remain visible within the whole. Here, flourishing, encounter with God, and trouble stand in one lineage without any one of them erasing the others.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

Belonging means being absorbed into an anonymous group.

THE ROOT

אָשֵׁר

Asher

GROWS FROM

אשר

ʾ-š-r

To be happy or flourish.

Asher carries the same root as ashrei, flourishing. Genesis makes that link explicit when Leah names her son Asher in the language of happiness; here the name remains within a lineage that also carries encounter and trouble.

ALSO GROWS

ashrei: Flourishing, happy.

אַשְׁרֵי

This is the language Leah uses when naming Asher, showing that the tribal name carries more than a label.

osher: Happiness, flourishing.

אֹשֶׁר

This related form makes the root’s association with flourishing visible in the name.

פַּגְעִיאֵל

Pagiel

GROWS FROM

פגע

p-g-ʿ

To meet, encounter, or reach; in some forms, to entreat or intercede.

Pagiel joins the encounter-root ⁨פגע⁩ with ⁨אֵל⁩ (El, God), and is commonly understood as “encounter of God.” The root allows meeting to carry the shade of intercession too: contact can become a reaching toward another.

ALSO GROWS

pāgaʿ: Meet, encounter, reach.

פָּגַע

This is the central action carried in Pagiel’s name.

hipgîaʿ: Entreat, intercede.

הִפְגִּיעַ

This form shows how encounter can become an appeal made on another’s behalf.

עָכְרָן

Ocran

GROWS FROM

עכר

ʿ-k-r

To trouble, disturb, or bring distress.

Ocran carries the root of trouble and disturbance. Its presence as Asher’s ancestor places a trouble-word beside a name associated with flourishing, without telling more about Ocran’s life than this line does.

ALSO GROWS

ʿākar: Trouble, disturb.

עָכַר

This verb holds the force preserved in Ocran’s name.

ʿĀkôr: Troubled; the name Achor, associated with trouble.

עָכוֹר

The related name preserves the same root, making trouble a condition carried in Hebrew naming.

THE PATTERN

A people can be counted without being made anonymous: each place in the whole remains attached to a name and its relationships.

Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls;

Numbers 1:2 · KJVThe census counts the whole congregation while preserving family ties and individual names.

And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher.

Genesis 30:13 · KJVAsher’s name carries the language of flourishing, which remains present when the tribe is later counted.

To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.

John 10:3 · KJVThe image of being known by name holds personal identity within a gathered community.

THE THREAD

And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher.

Genesis 30:13 · KJV

Genesis makes the link between Asher and the root of flourishing explicit. Numbers carries that name into the census, so the tribe’s place in the whole still bears the meaning held inside its name.

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