What Does Genesis 6:14 Mean in the King James?
Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The word for pitching the ark carries the sense of covering, and the coating itself comes from that same root: the vessel is protected by an act of covering.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to what carries you through a flood: its protection reaches both the hidden interior and the visible exterior. The covering leaves no side of the vessel exposed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that safety comes from an outer shell alone: the ark is covered within and without.
THE ROOT
וְכָפַרְתָּ
wekafarta
GROWS FROM
כפר
k-p-r
Cover, coat over.
“pitch it / pitch” in this verse is wekafarta. The verb translated “pitch it” and the noun translated “pitch” share the root כפר (k-p-r, covering). English makes one an action and the other a substance; Hebrew ties the coating to the act of covering, sealing the ark within and without.
ALSO GROWS
kopher: Pitch, a coating substance.
כֹּפֶר
This is the substance applied to the ark; its root links the material to the act of covering.
kipper: Cover; make atonement.
כִּפֶּר
The same root appears in the language of covering and atonement, opening a connection between coating the vessel and covering what is exposed.
THE PATTERN
Covering protects what is vulnerable by enclosing it or holding it from exposure.
And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.THE THREAD
For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD.The verb translated “make an atonement” comes from כפר (k-p-r, covering), the same root as the ark’s coating. That shared root lets the pitch reveal a deeper image of covering what is vulnerable.
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