Genesis 9:3
כָּל־רֶמֶשׂ אֲשֶׁר הוּא־חַי לָכֶם יִהְיֶה לְאָכְלָה כְּיֶרֶק עֵשֶׂב נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת־כֹּֽל׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
כָּל־רֶ֙מֶשׂ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הוּא־חַ֔י לָכֶ֥ם יִהְיֶ֖ה לְאָכְלָ֑ה כְּיֶ֣רֶק עֵ֔שֶׂב נָתַ֥תִּי לָכֶ֖ם אֶת־כֹּֽל׃
καὶ πᾶν ἑρπετὸν ὅ ἐστιν ζῶν ὑμῖν ἔσται εἰς βρῶσιν· ὡς λάχανα χόρτου ἔδωκα ὐμῖν τὰ πάντα.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Et omne, quod movetur et vivit, erit vobis in cibum: quasi olera virentia tradidi vobis omnia.
Todo lo que se mueve y tiene vida les servirá de alimento. Yo les doy todo esto, tal como antes les di las plantas verdes.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Todo lo que se mueve y vive, os será para mantenimiento: así como las legumbres y hierbas, os lo he dado todo.
Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you all things.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse states that every creeping/moving creature that is alive will be food for the addressees, just as the vegetation was given to them before. It closes with a summary statement that "everything" has now been given as food.
Key words
- kol ("every", H3605) — construct form appearing twice (opening and closing the verse), producing a bracketing structure that frames the entire statement as comprehensive ("every creeping thing" ... "everything").
- remes ("creeping thing", H7431) — masculine singular noun, the head of the construct phrase kol-remes, denoting small moving/crawling creatures as a category.
- chai ("alive", H2416A) — adjective following the pronoun hu ("it", H1931); together they form a relative clause "which it [is] alive," qualifying remes.
- yihyeh ("it will become/be", H1961) — qal imperfect, marking the future/ongoing outcome: the creature will become food, not simply "is" food.
- natati ("I have given", H5414G) — qal perfect, a completed act, contrasting grammatically with the imperfect yihyeh: the giving is already accomplished, while the state of being food is presented as future/ongoing.
What the text says
The verse opens with the construct chain kol-remes ("every [one] of creeping thing"), followed by the relative clause asher hu chai ("which it [is] alive") — a pronoun plus adjective construction rather than a finite verb, simply asserting the living state of the creature without narrating an action of moving. The predicate yihyeh le'okhlah ("it will be for food") uses the preposition le- (H9005) attached to okhlah ("food", H0402), a common Hebrew construction expressing "becoming" or "serving as" something, here cast in the imperfect aspect.
The second half shifts to the perfect verb natati ("I have given"), recalling a prior act of giving, introduced by the comparative ke- ("like", H9004) attached to yerek 'esev ("greenery of plant[s]"), itself a construct phrase. The clause ends with 'et-kol ("everything"), using the direct object marker 'et (H0853) before the same root kol that opened the verse, creating a structural echo: the totality named at the start (every creeping thing) is matched by the totality named at the end (everything given).
Differences between versions
The LXX renders remes with ἑρπετὸν ("creeping thing"), closely matching the Hebrew noun, while the Vulgate expands this into two verbs, quod movetur et vivit ("that moves and lives"), rendering the single adjectival clause asher hu chai as a compound description of motion and life rather than life alone. Both LXX (τὰ πάντα) and Vulgate (omnia) render the closing 'et-kol as "all things," matching the Hebrew's totality but without reproducing the kol...kol verbal echo visible in the Hebrew bracketing structure.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.