What Does Genesis 8:16 Mean?
Go out from the ark, you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons' wives with you.
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
Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.THE KEY
The same root that means “go out” also carries the sense of emergence: the ark preserves life, and the verse begins again when that life is called beyond its shelter.
THE MEANING
A shelter can carry you through danger, and still there is a moment when life opens beyond it. The call reaches Noah and his household together, holding emergence alongside connection. Preservation and a new beginning meet at this threshold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being protected does not mean you are meant to remain enclosed forever; here, coming out is part of preservation.
THE ROOT
צֵא
tse
GROWS FROM
יצא
y-ṣ-ʾ
To go out, come forth, emerge.
“go out” in this verse is tse. The command is addressed to Noah, yet its movement opens outward to the whole household named with him. The root holds both an exit from enclosure and an emergence into what follows.
ALSO GROWS
yetsi'ah: Going out, departure.
יְצִיאָה
This noun comes from the same root as the command “Go forth,” making the verse’s movement a departure into life beyond the ark.
motsa: Outlet, source, issue.
מוֹצָא
The language of going out can name both an exit and a source, so this departure also marks the beginning of what follows.
THE PATTERN
Life moves into new space when it is called outward from confinement.
And the LORD strengthened the heart of the Great House, king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel, and the children of Israel went out with a lifted hand.He brings me out into a broad place; he pulls me loose, because he delights in me.And when he had said these things, he cried out with a great voice, Lazarus, come out!THE THREAD
He brings me out into a broad place; he pulls me loose, because he delights in me.“Brought me forth” comes from יצא (yatsa, to go out or emerge), the same Hebrew root as צֵא (tse, “go forth”) here. The psalm names what Genesis leaves unstated: the emergence opens into מֶרְחָב (merḥav, a broad place).
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