Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"To you it shall be for meat" means God is handing Adam and Eve literal cuts of animal flesh to eat
In 1611 English, "meat" just meant food in general, not animal flesh specifically.
Genesis 1:29, in every translation this tool compares.
Genesis 1:29 has God giving Adam "every herb bearing seed… and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." That's a vegetarian diet being called "meat." The word came from Old English "mete," which simply meant food or nourishment of any kind: the sense survives in fossil phrases like "sweetmeat" (a candy) and "meat and drink to me." Matthew 3:4 does the same thing describing John the Baptist's "meat" as locusts and wild honey.
The narrower modern sense (meat as specifically animal flesh) split off later and gradually took over the word, so a reader who doesn't know the shift pictures God authorizing carnivory in Eden, which is the opposite of the point being made.
