What Does Genesis 6:1 Mean?
And it came to be, when humankind began to multiply upon the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,THE KEY
The Hebrew lets humanity and ground echo one another: the ground-being multiplies across the ground from which the name itself comes.
THE MEANING
Human life multiplies across the earth, and daughters are born among the expanding family. Increase appears as embodied, generational life, with each birth extending the human presence across the ground.
THE ROOT
הָאָדָם
ha-adam
GROWS FROM
א־ד־ם
ʾ-d-m
The shared word family connects human life with ground and soil.
“humankind” in this verse is ha-adam. English separates “men” from “earth,” but the Hebrew places הָאָדָם (ha-adam, “the human”) beside הָאֲדָמָה (ha-adamah, “the ground”), words sharing the consonants of their root. Human increase is pictured as life of the ground multiplying upon the ground.
ALSO GROWS
adam: human, humankind
אָדָם
The human is named with the same root consonants as the ground, keeping human life tied to its soil.
adamah: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
This is the ground across whose face humanity multiplies; the shared word family binds people to the earth beneath them.
לָרֹב
la-rov
GROWS FROM
ר־ב־ה
r-b-h
Become many, increase.
The word translated “multiply” carries motion toward becoming many, so growth here is an unfolding increase. Related forms carry the same seed into making numerous and being abundant.
ALSO GROWS
hirbah: made numerous, increased
הִרְבָּה
This related form shows the same root expressing increase as something brought about.
marbeh: increasing, abundant
מַרְבֶּה
The root also describes abundance, making the verse’s multiplication part of a wider language of increase.
יֻלְּדוּ
yulledu
GROWS FROM
י־ל־ד
y-l-d
Bear, give birth, beget.
“were born to them” in this verse is yulledu. The birth verb keeps increase concrete: it arrives as children born into a family, not as an abstract number. Its word family also reaches toward kindred and lineage, so each birth carries continuity beyond the moment.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The child is the life brought forth through this root, making the verse’s growth visible in a new person.
moledet: birth, kindred, lineage
מוֹלֶדֶת
The same root extends from birth toward kinship and lineage, linking a new arrival to generations.
THE PATTERN
Scriptural increase takes visible form as life multiplying into households, generations, and communities.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."He blesses them, and they multiply greatly; and he does not let their cattle grow few.And the word of God grew, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great crowd of the priests heard and responded by leaning their weight.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The Hebrew אָדָם (adam, human) echoes אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground), and Genesis 2:7 makes the relationship visible by forming the human from the ground. Genesis 6:1 then shows this ground-linked humanity multiplying across the earth.
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