What Does 2 Timothy 2:6 Mean?
The one who works the soil and toils must first take a share of the fruits.
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
The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.THE KEY
The worker is built into the harvest: the one who tends the fruit must receive from it first.
THE MEANING
Your labor is not meant to leave you standing outside what it grows. The one who tends the field is also a participant in its fruit, receiving from what the work brings to ripeness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your role is only to produce while others receive: the fruit is not meant to pass you by.
THE ROOT
μεταλαμβάνειν
metalambanein
GROWS FROM
λαμβάνω / λαβ- (lambanō / lab-)
take, receive, grasp
“take a share” in this verse is metalambanein. “Partaker” carries the sense of taking or receiving a share, not merely witnessing the harvest. Paired with “first,” it makes the worker’s reception part of the verse’s design.
ALSO GROWS
apolambanō: receive back, receive fully, or get one’s share
ἀπολαμβάνω
This compound keeps the sense of receiving a portion, echoing the worker’s share in the yield.
paralambanō: receive or take along
παραλαμβάνω
The same root continues to name receiving as an action, keeping the worker’s participation visible.
γεωργός
geōrgos
GROWS FROM
γεωργ- (γῆ + ἔργον; gē + ergon)
earth-worker; one who works the soil
“the one who works the soil” in this verse is geōrgos. The farmer’s name joins earth and work: this fruit is cultivated from the ground through tending. The one who works that ground is named as the first receiver of what it yields.
ALSO GROWS
geōrgia: cultivation, farming
γεωργία
This related word names the practice that brings the ground into fruitfulness.
geōrgeō: work the land, cultivate
γεωργέω
The verb makes the farmer’s identity an ongoing act of tending the earth.
καρπῶν
karpōn
GROWS FROM
καρπ-
karp-
fruit, produce, yield
“fruits” in this verse is karpōn. The fruit is the yield of the work, while related forms describe the process of bearing fruit. The verse places the worker inside that process, as a receiver of what has grown.
ALSO GROWS
karpophoreō: bear fruit
καρποφορέω
This verb turns the noun’s yield into an unfolding process of fruit-bearing.
karpophoros: fruit-bearing, fruitful
καρποφόρος
The same word family describes what produces fruit, keeping the focus on growth that can be shared.
THE PATTERN
Those who tend or produce a good are meant to share in its yield.
Whoever keeps the fig tree eats its fruit, and whoever keeps his master is weighted.And also, every human eats and drinks, and sees good in all his toil. This is the giving of God.Who ever serves as a soldier on his own rations? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who shepherds a flock and does not eat of the flock's milk?THE THREAD
Who ever serves as a soldier on his own rations? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who shepherds a flock and does not eat of the flock's milk?Both verses use καρπός (karpos, “fruit”) for the yield of a worker’s tending. The shared root makes the connection plain: the one who works toward the harvest is also meant to receive from it.
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