I like reading different Bible translations but Genesis 25:29 uses an expression I never heard before.?

Now would be a good time to introduce you to Strong's Concordance which gives you the meaning of every word in the KJV. Here are the results of a search for "sod pottage" ...

http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/search.cfm?C...

Click on the link associated with each word to learn its meaning and much more.

The KJV was written at a time when the English language was still in its infancy, still flexible and indefinite. There were no proper spellings, for instance. In a book the same word might be spelled two or three different ways on the same page. Nobody had written an English grammar! Many very common figures of speech that we use today come either from the KJV or Shakespeare (who was writing around the same time).

But the thing is, any language is going to change a lot in 400 years! It's amazing we can understand it at all!

I knew what 'pottage' was, in fact I think the word is still used in France. It really means 'that which goes in a pot'. 'Sod' is a mystery to me, but I'm sure someone who understands the history of the language could relate it to some modern word that we'd recognize.

The Strong's Exhaustive Concordance lists every word translated into English in The King James Version and shows all the places that English word appears in Scripture. It also has dictionaries in the back where you can find out what the word is in the original language and what that word meaning is. If a person doesn't speak those original languages or has confusion with the English, it's a great tool for helping with understanding. It also helps each individual student check out whether the translators' work checks out with The Manuscripts.

Here is an online version. http://www.blueletterbible.org/search.cfm

sod = word #H2102 in The Hebrew Dictionary of The Strong's Concordance http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexico...

pottage = word #H5138 in The Hebrew Dictionary of The Strong's Concordance http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexico...

Sod: A primitive root; to seethe; figuratively to be insolent: - be proud, deal proudly, presume, (come) presumptuously, sod.

In kings James Version Sod by that definition is saying that Jacob a man Known not to play by the rules , a (cheater) have in mind that he wanted the birthright and purposely prepare that delicious pottage knowing that Esau will be tired and hungry so he saw that opportunity and took advantage , yes he cook a stew in a presumptuously way just like a kid does when it tells a friend I have this lollipop and is all mine then tell him I have another do you want it? sort of a temptation, is not? well Sod reveals to the reader that wasn't a pure coincidence that Jacob prepare that Pottage , was all intentional with the purpose of obtaining the birthright by tricking Esau on his weakest moment. (Hunger)

Old English. Our language is continually evolving. Terms and expressions used less than fifty years ago have radically changed in meaning. There is, I have been told, a dictionary of the English language published in the 1800s, that provides definitions for many of the terms found in the KJV Bible.

Keep in mind that this KJV is not the original, but one that was updated to resolve "problems". The original printing was made before English spelling was standardized, and when printers, as a matter of course, expanded and contracted the spelling of the same words in different places, so as to achieve an even column of text.

By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of twenty-years work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville's fine folio edition of 1763. This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from the 1760 edition, which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings.

he was cooking lentil stew

"sod" / "sodden" in its old meaning its related to the word seethe (ie: boil)

"pottage" is a word for a thick soup

so from the Elizabethan to the modern "Jacob was boiling a thick soup"

Which is one of several good reasons to avoid the King James Version.

Potage is throwing all sorts of food scraps together that you would otherwising throwing out like stems banana skins dinosaur offcuts and cooking them

Same as Haggis but made from dinosaur bits.

Learned something new. I knew one day coming here would pay off.