What Does Leviticus 7:6 Mean?
Every male among the priests shall eat of it. It shall be eaten in the set-apart place. It is most set apart.
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 male among the priests shall eat thereof: it shall be eaten in the holy place: it is most holy.THE KEY
The food and the place where it is eaten share the same root of set-apartness, making this meal sacred and tightly bounded.
THE MEANING
Every male among the priests receives this portion, and it is eaten in a set-apart place. The food itself is named “set-apart of set-apart things,” so the sacred boundary marks both what is eaten and where. Access is precise: priestly status and sex determine who participates.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
What is set apart must remain untouched. Here the set-apart portion is eaten, but within sharply defined limits of sex, priestly status, and place.
THE ROOT
קָדוֹשׁ
qadosh
GROWS FROM
קדש
q-d-sh
Set apart; reserve as sacred.
“set-apart place; most set apart” in this verse is qadosh. The verse calls the place בְּמָקוֹם קָדוֹשׁ (be-maqom qadosh, in a set-apart place) and the portion קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים (qodesh qodashim, set-apartness of set-apart things), a Hebrew superlative. One root marks both the location and the food: eating this portion takes place inside the same set-apart boundary.
ALSO GROWS
miqdash: Sanctuary; set-apart place
מִקְדָּשׁ
This branch carries set-apartness into a place, like the one where the priests eat the portion.
qiddesh: To set apart; consecrate
קִדֵּשׁ
It names the act of marking something as reserved for sacred use.
qadosh: Set apart
קָדוֹשׁ
This adjective describes the place named in the verse.
יֹאכְלֶנּוּ
yokhlenu
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
Eat; consume.
“eat” in this verse is yokhlenu. The root names both the act of eating and, in its branches, food itself. Here its meaning reaches beyond keeping a sacred portion apart: the priests take it in as food, within the verse’s precise limits on who eats and where.
ALSO GROWS
ʾokhel: Food
אֹכֶל
This noun names what is received through the act described here.
maʾakhal: Food; that which is eaten
מַאֲכָל
The same root links the priests’ act of eating to the portion as something meant to be consumed.
THE PATTERN
What is set apart carries a defined boundary around who may receive it.
They eat those things wherewith the covering was made, to fill their hands and to set them apart. But a stranger does not eat of it, because they are set apart.Do not give what is set apart to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before the swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn around and tear you apart.THE THREAD
But from the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.The shared root אכל (ʾ-k-l, eat or consume) appears in both “eat” and “eatest.” Genesis places a prohibition around what may be eaten; Leviticus assigns a sacred portion to a particular group, showing how the boundary around eating shapes its meaning.
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