What Does Deuteronomy 28:11 Mean?
The LORD shall make you overflow with good, in the fruit of your womb, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground, in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you.
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
And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee.THE KEY
The root behind “plenteous” carries the sense of surplus that remains, appearing here as fruit in bodies, animals, and soil.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you through a picture of good taking fruit in your body, your livestock, and your ground. Abundance here reaches beyond possessions to the life that grows and bears fruit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that divine good is only inward or spiritual: the verse includes bodily, animal, and agricultural fruitfulness.
THE ROOT
הוֹתִירְךָ
hotirkha
GROWS FROM
יתר
To remain, be left over, or exceed (yatar); in the Hiphil, to leave over or make abundant.
“make you overflow with good” in this verse is hotirkha. This verb shares its root with words for what remains as a surplus. So “plenteous” carries the sense of increase that leaves something over, and the verse makes that surplus visible in fruit across body, herd, and soil.
ALSO GROWS
yether: Remainder, surplus
יֶתֶר
This noun names what remains beyond what is used, revealing the surplus within the verse’s abundance.
yitron: Profit, advantage, surplus
יִתְרוֹן
Ecclesiastes uses this word to ask what surplus remains from human labor, showing another shade of the same root.
נִשְׁבַּע
nishba
GROWS FROM
שבע
To swear or bind oneself by an oath (shava).
“sware” in this verse is nishba. The abundance is presented as a sworn pledge. The same consonants appear in the word for “seven,” and Genesis 21 joins seven ewe lambs with an oath at Beersheba, echoing the pledge’s weight.
ALSO GROWS
shevu'ah: Oath
שְׁבוּעָה
This noun makes explicit the binding pledge carried by the verse’s “sware.”
sheva: Seven
שֶׁבַע
The shared consonants echo the scriptural association of an oath with seven, made visible in Genesis 21:28–31.
לְטוֹבָה
letovah
GROWS FROM
טוב
To be good, beneficial, or well (tov).
“goods” in this verse is letovah. The Hebrew phrase attaches this abundance to tovah, “good” or “welfare.” The verse therefore frames increase as well-being, giving its surplus a quality as well as a quantity.
ALSO GROWS
tov: Good, beneficial
טוֹב
This adjective shows the root’s basic sense of what is good or beneficial.
tovah: Goodness, benefit, welfare
טוֹבָה
This feminine form echoes the verse’s phrase and frames abundance as a condition of well-being.
THE PATTERN
Abundance takes form as fruitfulness across human life, animals, and cultivated land.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."You visit the earth and give it drink; you enrich it greatly. The channels of God are full of waters. You set their grain firm, for so you have set it.Now the one who supplies seed to the sower supplies bread for eating, and fills out your sown seed, and makes grow the fruits of your alignment.THE THREAD
What remains to a man from all the toil that he toils under the sun?“Profit” is יִתְרוֹן (yitron), from the same root יתר behind the abundance verb here. Ecclesiastes asks what surplus human labor leaves; Deuteronomy pictures increase reaching body, herd, and soil.
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