What Does Genesis 6:21 Mean?
And take for yourself of all that is eaten, and gather it to yourself, and it shall be food for you and for 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 take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.THE KEY
Hebrew gives “food” and “is eaten” one root, so the gathered store is defined by the life it enters, and by the other lives it sustains.
THE MEANING
Your life is sustained by what is made available and taken in. The verse widens provision beyond the self: what you gather is also for the other lives that depend on it. What is kept ready becomes a shared condition of continuing life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that survival means securing enough only for yourself dissolves here: the gathered food is expressly “for thee, and for them.”
THE ROOT
מַאֲכָל
maʾakhal
GROWS FROM
אכל
eat, consume
The noun מַאֲכָל (maʾakhal, “food”) and the verb יֵאָכֵל (yeʾakhel, “is eaten”) both grow from אכל (ʾ-k-l, “eat, consume”). English separates the provision from the act of eating, while Hebrew holds them in one word family: what is gathered serves life as it is taken in.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: eat, consume
אָכַל
The verse’s “is eaten” form belongs to this verb family, linking the supply to the act that sustains life.
maʾakhal: food, that which is eaten
מַאֲכָל
This is the verse’s word for food; its root makes provision and consumption part of the same unfolding.
THE PATTERN
Food sustains a wider web of life: it is given, gathered, and provided for human and creaturely need.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to every creeping thing upon the earth, in which there is living soul, I have given every green herb for food. And it was so.She prepares her bread in summer, and heaps her food in the reaping.Look at the birds of the air, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into storehouses; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?THE THREAD
And God said, "Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant upon the face of all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit with seed in it. It shall be yours for food."The phrase “for meat” is לְאָכְלָה (leʾokhlah, “for food, to eat”), built from אכל (ʾ-k-l, “eat, consume”), the same root as the food and eating words in Genesis 6:21. Genesis 1:29 presents food as given; here, that provision is gathered for human and other lives together.
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