What Does Psalm 78:27 Mean in the King James?
He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea:
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 verse fills earth and sky with provision: flesh falls like dust below, while winged fowl multiply like the sand of the sea.
THE MEANING
You are shown provision so abundant that its measure shifts from portions to landscapes: dust underfoot, birds across the sea’s expanse. The supply feels pervasive and beyond counting, moving from what falls upon you to what fills the horizon.
THE ROOT
שְׁאֵר
she’er
GROWS FROM
שאר
sha’ar
Remain; be left.
The word שְׁאֵר (she’er, flesh) belongs to the שאר (sha’ar, remain) word family, which also names what remains and one’s near kin. The food-word therefore carries bodily substance and kinship in one seed, even as the verse makes that flesh as plentiful as dust.
ALSO GROWS
sha’ar: Remain; be left.
שָׁאַר
This verb gives the root’s basic sense of what is left or remains.
she’erit: Remnant; remainder.
שְׁאֵרִית
What remains carries the same consonantal root as the word translated “flesh.”
she’er: Flesh; near kin.
שְׁאֵר
This noun can name both bodily substance and kinship, joining food and embodied relationship.
עוֹף כָּנָף
ʿōf kānāf
GROWS FROM
כנף
kanaf
Wing; edge or extremity.
“feathered fowls” in this verse is ʿōf kānāf. The Hebrew phrase עוֹף כָּנָף (ʿōf kānāf, winged fowl) names the birds through their wings. כָּנָף (kānāf, wing) also means an edge or corner, so the image carries a sense of extension as the birds multiply like the sand of the sea.
ALSO GROWS
kānāf: Wing.
כָּנָף
The wing names the feature that carries the fowl through the air.
kānāf: Edge or corner, including the corner of a garment.
כָּנָף
The same word reaches from a bird’s wing to the outer edge of a covering, linking flight with extension.
THE PATTERN
Scripture renders what exceeds counting through images that fill the horizon and defeat measurement.
That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me.After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;THE THREAD
None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.Leviticus uses שְׁאֵר (she’er, near kin/flesh) in the phrase “near of kin,” the same word used for the flesh that rains here. Its root lets the word carry both food and kinship: bodily substance and the nearness of one person to another.
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