What Does Psalm 50:13 Mean?
Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?
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
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?THE KEY
The offering cannot feed the One who already owns every animal.
THE MEANING
This verse presents God as lacking nothing a sacrifice could supply. The bulls and goats, including their flesh and blood, already belong to him; the offering cannot feed its maker.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that God depends on your sacrifice to supply what he lacks.
THE ROOT
הַאֹכַל
haʾokhal
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
eat, consume
“Do I eat” in this verse is haʾokhal. English makes “eat” sound like ordinary appetite, but this root also names consuming. The question asks whether what already belongs to God can become food he lacks; the root opens the image without making God dependent on an offering.
ALSO GROWS
maʾakhal: food, something eaten
מַאֲכָל
This branch names what is consumed, sharpening the question of whether sacrifice supplies God with food.
ʾokhlah: consuming, as in “a consuming fire”
אֹכְלָה
The same root can describe consuming action, so “eat” reaches beyond appetite while the verse denies that God needs a meal.
THE PATTERN
Worship responds to God’s sufficiency; it does not supply a need in God.
And Samuel said, Does the LORD delight in rising offerings and slaughtered offerings as much as in hearing and responding to the voice of the LORD? Behold, hearing and responding is better than a slaughtered offering; to prick the ear is better than the fat of rams.For I delight in faithful love and not slaughter, and the knowledge of God more than the ascending offerings.Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, for he himself gives to all life and breath and all things.THE THREAD
If I hungered, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and what fills it.The line before this question answers it: even if God were hungry, he would not depend on you, because the whole world belongs to him. The animals offered as food are already his.
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