What Does Genesis 9:3 Mean?
Every creeping thing that lives shall be food for you; as the green grass I have given you all.
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
Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.THE KEY
The word for “meat” means food, placing moving creatures and green growth within one field of provision.
THE MEANING
The same food-language reaches from the green herb to moving creatures, naming both as provision for you. This provision is given, and its scope reaches to “all things.”
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that animal food belongs to a separate category from plant provision: both appear within the same gift of food.
THE ROOT
לְאָכְלָה
le'okhlah
GROWS FROM
אכל
To eat; food is that which is eaten.
The word translated “meat” comes from the root for eating and carries the wider sense of food. The green herb is already named as food in the comparison, so plant growth and animal life enter the same category of provision.
ALSO GROWS
akhal: To eat or consume.
אָכַל
This verb is the action within the word for food: what is given here is what can be eaten.
ma'akhal: Food; something to eat.
מַאֲכָל
This related noun makes visible the broader food-sense carried by “meat” in the verse.
נָתַתִּי
natatti
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
“all” in this verse is natatti. The food is described as something given and placed within your reach. The comparison with the green herb links this provision to the same giving that already meets you through plant life.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This verb names the act behind the verse: provision is placed in your hands.
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun brings the gift-language of the root into focus: food is received as something given.
THE PATTERN
Provision reaches life through the living world as something given: through growing plants, creatures, and fruitful seasons.
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."He makes the grass sprout for the cattle, and the herb for the service of humankind, to bring bread out from the earth.Yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving you rain from heaven and seasons that bear fruit, filling your hearts with food and gladness.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."Genesis 1:29 uses the same Hebrew food-word לְאָכְלָה (le’okhlah, “for food”) for seed-bearing plants. Genesis 9:3 carries that food-language from green growth to moving creatures, while its “I have given” echoes the earlier verse’s act of giving.
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