What Does Genesis 6:16 Mean in the King James?
A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
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
A refuge protects life through openings held within its boundary, not by sealing every opening.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now in the shape of a refuge: life is held inside a boundary with an opening above, a door at the side, and room arranged in levels. Protection gives light and passage a place within the structure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that safety requires total closure: the ark has both a window and a door, with their openings held within its boundary.
THE ROOT
פֶּתַח
petaḥ
GROWS FROM
פתח
to open
The door is named with the root פתח (p-t-ḥ, “to open”), so the entrance is an opening within the vessel’s boundary. This root also describes opening a hand: the same word-family can name an opening that permits passage or one that releases provision.
ALSO GROWS
pātaḥ: to open
פָּתַח
The verb makes opening the doorway’s defining action, not just a feature of its construction.
pāṯōaḥ tip̄taḥ: open wide; you shall open
פָּתֹחַ תִּפְתַּח
Deuteronomy 15:8 uses this root for opening the hand to someone in need, showing that פתח can describe an opening that releases provision as well as one that allows entry.
THE PATTERN
Preservation takes shape through bounded thresholds that shelter life while governing passage.
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 ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.THE THREAD
And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.The Hebrew for “door” here is פֶּתַח (petaḥ, “opening”), the same word used for the ark’s door. In both verses the doorway is a threshold within a boundary, and what happens at that opening is part of how life is sheltered.
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