food: something given to be eaten or consumed, whether nourishment for the living, prey for wild animals, or fuel for fire
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This word is built straight off the ordinary verb "to eat," and it names the result of that action: the thing that gets eaten. It almost never stands on its own. In nearly every verse it sits inside one set phrase, "given for food," so what shifts from passage to passage is not the word itself but who or what does the eating.
Three very different eaters appear:
In the creation accounts and the law, living creatures are the eaters, and plants or animals are handed to people and beasts as nourishment.
In the prophets, wild animals and birds are the eaters, and a scattered flock or a defeated army is thrown out to be devoured.
Twice a dead vine and a doomed nation are handed to the fire, which burns them up as fuel.
The thread tying these together is the plain picture of eating. Hebrew can call firewood "food for the fire" and a fallen enemy "food for the birds," because in each case something is given over to be consumed. Where English reaches for three different words (food, prey, fuel), the original keeps just one, closely related to its everyday word for a meal (מַאֲכָל) and gentler than the word for a predator's torn kill (טֶרֶף).
Nuances
1afood, nourishment: what living creatures are given to eat to stay alive
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 1:29Gen 1:30Gen 6:21Gen 9:3Exo 16:15Lev 11:39Lev 25:6
1bprey: living beings handed over to be devoured, by wild animals or by a conquering enemy
Jer 12:9Ezk 23:37*Ezk 29:5Ezk 34:5Ezk 34:8Ezk 34:10Ezk 35:12*Ezk 39:4
1cfuel: wood, or a doomed nation, given to the fire to be burned up
Calling firewood this word pictures the fire as an eater, an image the flat word "fuel" erases.Ezk 15:4Ezk 21:32
Both
Both name what is put into a fire to be burned up.Ezk 15:6
Only fuel
"Fuel" is a neutral, almost technical word for what powers a fire, with none of the eating picture the original carries.
“prey”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“meat”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How okhlah differs from similar Hebrew words
מַאֲכָלThe plain everyday word for food as fare or a meal, what is on the table to eat; this word is the more formal "that which is given to be eaten," and it alone stretches to name fire's fuel and a beast's prey.
Points to an actual dish or appetizing fruit good to eat, set before a person or on a table.Gen 3:61Ki 10:5Gen 40:17
אֹכֶלFood as provisions or grain, the supplies you store up; this word is less about the stockpile and more about the act of being handed over to be eaten or consumed.
almost always appears in the set phrase that grants something to be eaten, marking what is assigned or appointed for food rather than the provisions themselvesGen 1:29Gen 1:30Gen 9:3
stretches beyond human meals to prey: people or animals handed over to be devoured by beasts and birdsJer 12:9Ezk 34:5Ezk 29:5
stretches further still to fuel: wood given over to be consumed by fire, the fire treating it the way a mouth treats foodEzk 15:4Ezk 15:6Ezk 21:32
Both
both name food in the basic sense of what is eaten to sustain life, and English Bibles render each simply as foodGen 42:10Gen 6:21
names everyday provisions that people gather, store, and buy: the practical stock of things to eatGen 41:35Gen 42:7Deu 2:6
covers the food gathered to be eaten meal by meal, including the daily portion of manna each person collectedExo 16:16Exo 16:18
לֶחֶםBread, the daily staple, and food in general; this word names the function "to be eaten" rather than the loaf itself, and Exodus 16:15 uses both when it calls the manna bread given to be food.
Names something appointed "for food," an allotment handed over to be eaten, and turns up mostly in that set provision formula rather than for a dish on the table.Gen 1:29Gen 9:3Gen 6:21
Reaches past human meals to what is devoured as prey or burned as fuel: sheep left as "food" for wild beasts and birds, and vine wood given over to the fire.Ezk 34:5Ezk 39:4Ezk 15:4
Both
Both name food given to sustain the people who eat it: at the manna the very same substance is called the "bread" the LORD gave and the "food" Israel was to eat.Exo 16:15
The concrete baked loaf and daily staple: the bread Melchizedek brought out, the bread set in rows before God, the bread earned by the sweat of the brow.Gen 14:18Exo 25:30Gen 3:19
Stands for a shared meal, so that "to eat bread" means to sit down and dine together.Gen 31:54Exo 2:20Gen 43:32
טֶרֶףPrey as torn, seized flesh, the violent kill a predator rips apart; this word is milder, naming anything handed over to be consumed without the tearing.
names fuel handed over to the fire: wood or a doomed city given to the flames to be burned up, food in the sense of what fire devoursEzk 15:4Ezk 15:6Ezk 21:32
names prey given to scavengers: corpses of the slain handed to wild beasts and birds to be devoured, a picture of judgmentEzk 29:5Ezk 34:5Ezk 39:4Jer 12:9
Both
both are the plain word for food: the edible provision given to living creatures to eat and keep aliveGen 1:29Gen 9:3Mat 14:15Luk 9:13
reaches into figurative, spiritual nourishment: the teaching a person feeds on, with basic instruction as "milk" and deeper truth as solid food1Co 3:21Co 10:3
carries a whole debate about conscience and defilement: whether eating certain food makes a person clean or unclean, and how one believer's eating affects anotherMrk 7:19Rom 14:151Co 8:81Co 8:13
βρῶσιςGreek“eating”The Greek word for eating, both the act and the food eaten; it leans on the process of consuming, close to how this word marks things given over to be eaten up.
Marks something granted or set apart to be eaten, provision assigned as food, most often in the fixed phrase "for food" where God gives plants or grain to a creature.Gen 1:29Gen 6:21Exo 16:15
Stretches to what is consumed by fire as fuel or devoured by wild animals as prey, so a person or vine can be handed over to become someone or something else's food.Ezk 15:4Ezk 34:5Ezk 39:4
Both
Both name food, the concrete thing that is eaten as nourishment, each built directly on its own language's verb "to eat", so the Hebrew word is the natural Old Testament counterpart to the Greek.Gen 9:32Co 9:10
Names the act of eating itself, the process, not only the food on the plate: Paul weighs whether the eating is permitted, not what is served.1Co 8:4Rom 14:17Col 2:16
Extends to corrosion, the slow eating away of metal by rust, a sense the eating-verb behind it makes natural in Greek.Mat 6:19Mat 6:20
What scholars say about okhlah
אָכְלָה is a feminine noun from the root אכל "to eat," naming the object or result of eating, food. The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) give a two-fold range: (1) food, nourishment for humans and animals, concentrated in Genesis 1-9, Exodus 16, and Leviticus; and (2) an object of devouring, that which is given over to be consumed, whether by fire (Ezekiel 15:4, 6; 21:32), by beasts and birds (Jeremiah 12:9;Ezekiel 29:5; 34:5, 8, 10; 39:4), or in child sacrifice to idols (Ezekiel 23:37). The word almost always occurs in the fixed construction with נתן, "give for food/to be consumed," and its heavy concentration in Ezekiel's judgment oracles gives the second sense its prophetic, punitive coloring.