What Does Matthew 24:38 Mean?
For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah went into the ark,
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
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,THE KEY
The Greek word for “flood” carries the force of “washing over,” so ordinary life stands at the edge of being overtaken.
THE MEANING
You can be inside ordinary rhythms, eating, drinking, joining lives, arranging marriages, while a decisive threshold approaches beyond what those routines register. The flood’s Greek name evokes water washing over, placing that familiar rhythm at the edge of being overtaken.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Familiar routine does not prove that nothing is approaching a threshold.
THE ROOT
κατακλυσμοῦ
kataklysmou
GROWS FROM
κλυζ-
klyz-
To wash over; to inundate.
The word for the flood belongs to the Greek κλύζω family, carrying the image of water washing over what it reaches. That makes the flood more than a time marker here: the ordinary rhythm stands under a force that can overtake it.
ALSO GROWS
klýzō: Wash over; surge over.
κλύζω
This verb shares the root’s consonants and carries the washing-over image within the flood word.
kataklýzō: Inundate; overwhelm with water.
κατακλύζω
This related verb shares the root’s consonants and names the action of flooding.
γαμοῦντες
gamountes
GROWS FROM
γαμ-
gam-
To marry; form a marriage.
“Marrying” and “giving in marriage” use related forms from the same Greek root. The wording gathers both entering a union and arranging one into the scene’s continuing social rhythm.
ALSO GROWS
gámos: Marriage; wedding.
γάμος
This noun shares the root consonants and names the union around which the verse’s paired actions turn.
gaméō: Marry.
γαμέω
This verb shares the root and is the source form behind the word translated “marrying.”
gamízō: Give in marriage.
γαμίζω
This related verb shares the root and names the paired action of arranging someone’s marriage.
THE PATTERN
Ordinary rhythms can continue up to a threshold that suddenly divides what came before from what follows.
And those who came in, male and female of all flesh, came as God had commanded him, and the LORD shut him in.Likewise also, as it was in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built.When they say, "Wholeness and firm footing," then sudden ruin stands over them, like labor pains upon a woman carrying a child in her womb, and they will not escape.THE THREAD
They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and made them all perish.Luke uses the same Greek flood noun, κατακλυσμός (kataklysmós, inundation), and makes explicit that the flood comes after Noah enters the ark. That sequence reveals the hinge in Matthew’s verse: ordinary life continues up to the entrance, then the waters overtake the scene.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us