What Does Genesis 7:4 Mean in the King James?
For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
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 word for “substance” means what stands or exists, so the announced flood reaches the whole field of life on the ground.
THE MEANING
The warning is exact: seven days remain, then forty days and nights of rain, and everything living that God has made is removed from the earth. The word rendered “substance” carries the sense of what stands or exists, widening the sentence to the whole created order. The verse speaks of life as made by God and still within God’s power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that existence is self-sustaining and beyond loss is undone here: the verse names both the making of life and its destruction as God’s acts.
THE ROOT
יְקוּם
yequm
GROWS FROM
קום
qum
To stand, rise, or come into being.
The Hebrew noun יְקוּם (yequm), “what stands or exists,” grows from קוּם (qum), “to stand or rise.” English “substance” can sound like a material category; the Hebrew points to all that stands in existence, now threatened with removal.
ALSO GROWS
qum: To stand or rise.
קוּם
This verbal form makes the root’s image plain: the noun for what exists is linked to what stands.
heqim: To raise up or establish.
הֵקִים
This causative form names the act of making something stand, echoing the verse’s statement that God made what is now threatened.
tequmah: Rising or restoration.
תְּקוּמָה
This noun carries the root’s movement from standing to rising, showing that the same root can name both existence and its renewed arising.
THE PATTERN
Created life depends on God for its existence and remains within God’s power.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.THE THREAD
And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:The same Hebrew noun יְקוּם (yequm), “what exists or stands,” appears here for the substance swallowed by the earth. In Genesis, the waters remove it from the earth’s face; here, the ground itself swallows it, making the shared word’s full reach visible.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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