What Does Genesis 6:19 Mean in the King James?
And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
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 Hebrew names both the creature and its preservation with the same root: what is living is carried so that it keeps living.
THE MEANING
Life is preserved by carrying its living forms through danger: each kind is kept in a male-and-female pair, alive with you. The same Hebrew root names both the “living thing” and the act of keeping it alive, binding preservation to the life already present.
THE ROOT
הַחַי
ha-chay
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
to live, be alive; in its causative form, to keep alive
“living thing / keep them alive” in this verse is ha-chay. The Hebrew uses the same root for the living creature and for keeping it alive. English separates the being from the act of preservation, while the Hebrew binds them: what is carried is already living, and what is done is to let that life continue.
ALSO GROWS
chay: living, alive
חַי
This is the word behind “living thing,” naming the life that enters the ark.
chayyim: life
חַיִּים
This noun names what the ark preserves: the life already present in each kind.
le-hachayot: to keep alive, preserve life
לְהַחֲיוֹת
This is the verse’s causative form of the root, showing preservation as carrying life forward.
THE PATTERN
Life continues when living beings are carried through danger and held in their distinct kinds.
Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.THE THREAD
Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.“Keep seed alive” uses the same חיה (ch-y-h), “live,” root behind both “living thing” and “keep them alive” in Genesis 6:19. The next verse extends the preservation from each living kind to the seed carried forward.
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