Hebrew word · H396
אֲכִילָה
ha'akhilah
food
"Food, a meal, something eaten," formed from the verb akhal, "to eat." BDB and HALOT list it as occurring only here.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
food, a meal, an eating, meat
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of 1 Kings 19:8
- Range of meaning
"Food, a meal, something eaten," formed from the verb akhal, "to eat." BDB and HALOT list it as occurring only here.
- Against the English
KJV's "meat" meant food of any kind in 1611. Modern readers easily picture flesh. In fact the meal was a flat cake of bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water (v. 6).
- How it drifted
In older English "meat" was the general word for food (as in "meat and drink"). It narrowed to mean animal flesh in later centuries.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Found only here in the Hebrew Bible. Later Hebrew uses the form for "eating" or "a meal." The LXX renders it brōsis ("food, eating") and the Vulgate cibus ("food").
Where it appears
1 Kings · 1
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1 Kings 19:8 הָאֲכִילָ֣ה the food
So he got up and ate and drank. And strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.
Here: A noun formed from "to eat." It occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. It points back to the particular meal the angel provided, not to food in general.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.