What Does Deuteronomy 14:22 Mean?
You shall truly give a tenth of all the yield of your seed, what the field brings forth year by year.
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
Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.THE KEY
The “increase” is the field’s coming-in, and the verse places a tenth within that yearly arrival.
THE MEANING
What comes from your seed and field is apportioned within the yearly rhythm of receiving. The Hebrew phrase translated “truly tithe” emphatically names the tenth, while “year by year” makes that setting apart part of a recurring cycle.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The yield is not presented as an undivided whole from which a share is decided only afterward; the verse names a tenth within the year’s produce.
THE ROOT
תְּבוּאַת
tevuʾat
GROWS FROM
בוא
To come, enter, or arrive.
The word rendered “increase” is תְּבוּאַת (tevuʾat, produce or yield), from the root בוא (boʾ, come or enter). The harvest is pictured as what comes in from the seed and field, giving the year’s yield the sense of an arrival.
ALSO GROWS
boʾ: To come, enter, or arrive.
בּוֹא
This verb reveals the movement beneath the produce: the yield comes in.
mavoʾ: Entrance or coming in.
מָבוֹא
This related form keeps the sense of arrival present in the word for increase.
tevuʾah: Produce, yield, or harvest.
תְּבוּאָה
This noun names what comes in from the field.
זַרְעֶךָ
zarʿekha
GROWS FROM
זרע
To sow; seed as what is sown.
The root זרע (zeraʿ, sow or seed) holds both the planted seed and its offspring. The verse’s yearly produce therefore begins in seed and belongs to a repeating cycle of sowing and yield.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow or plant.
זָרַע
The verb points to the action carried within the word translated “seed.”
zeraʿ: Seed or offspring.
זֶרַע
The same word can name what is planted and what continues from it, joining planting to future yield.
עַשֵּׂר תְּעַשֵּׂר
ʿasser teʿasser
GROWS FROM
עשר
Ten; in this verb form, to take or set apart a tenth.
“give a tenth” in this verse is ʿasser teʿasser. The Hebrew repeats the verb form for “tithe,” an emphatic construction rendered “truly tithe.” Its root, עשר (ʿeser, ten), makes the tenth explicit: the share is named within the yield itself.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeser: Ten.
עֶשֶׂר
This is the number at the root of the tithe.
maʿaser: A tenth or tithe.
מַעֲשֵׂר
This noun names the portion as one in ten.
ʿasiri: Tenth, as an ordinal.
עֲשִׂירִי
This related form preserves the root’s numerical sense of tenth.
THE PATTERN
A portion is set aside from increase within a recurring rhythm of receiving.
When you have finished setting aside the tenth of all that your land brings in, in the third year, the year of the tenth, and have given it to the Levite, to the sojourner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, so that they may eat within your gates and be filled.Give the LORD weight with your wealth, and with the first of all your yield.On the first day of the week, let each of you lay something by at his own side, storing it up, as his way has gone well for him, so that no gatherings are made when I come.THE THREAD
All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.The same root זרע (zeraʿ, seed or sowing) appears in both verses. Deuteronomy places the tithe within the year’s yield from seed, while Genesis names seed and harvest as part of the earth’s continuing cycle.
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