GENERATIVE STRENGTH — a noun for a man’s vigour specifically as the power that produces children, distinct from koach, ordinary strength, and from chayil, martial or moral force. It survives almost entirely inside one phrase, re’shit on-, the FIRST of someone’s vigour, which is a way of saying a firstborn son. ⭐ Genesis 49:3 (already on these pages) is Jacob to Reuben, my might and the first of my strength, three lines of grandeur that exist to make the demotion in the next verse land harder; Deuteronomy 21:17 uses the identical construction as the REASON a father may not demote such a son; and Psalm 78:51 (not yet on these pages) uses the plural of it for every firstborn struck in Egypt. ⚠ The English shelf flattens it to plain ‘strength’ throughout — ‘the beginning of his strength’ in the KJV and ASV — which is not wrong but loses why the word is here at all: the son is not evidence that his father is strong, he is the first thing that strength produced. → first discussed at Deut 21:17