What Does Haggai 1:6 Mean?
You have sown much and brought in little. You eat, but you are not filled. You drink, but you do not drink your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And the one who earns wages earns them into a pierced pouch.
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
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.THE KEY
This verse shows how much can enter a life without ever reaching satiety.
THE MEANING
The verse names a life in which effort and supply keep arriving but do not settle into enough: the harvest is thin, appetite remains, the body stays cold, and earned money leaks away. Its truth speaks wherever abundant input still leaves a person without nourishment, warmth, or security.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that more effort automatically becomes enough: labor, food, drink, clothing, and pay can all be present while nourishment and security remain out of reach.
THE ROOT
לִשְׂבָעָה
lisva'ah
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
To be sated, to have one’s fill.
“not filled” in this verse is lisva'ah. The Hebrew phrase points to satiety: the state of having had enough. Food and drink approach that fullness, but the verse keeps showing the reader short of it.
ALSO GROWS
śāvēaʿ: Sated, satisfied
שָׂבֵעַ
The verse names a failure to arrive at fullness, not simply a low quantity of food.
śōvaʿ: Satiety, fullness
שֹׂבַע
The same root names the state that the verse’s repeated lack withholds.
הַמִּשְׂתַּכֵּר מִשְׂתַּכֵּר
hamishtakker mishtakker
GROWS FROM
שכר
To hire or pay wages; to earn wages.
“earneth wages” in this verse is hamishtakker mishtakker. Hebrew repeats the same שכר verb for the wage earner and the earning itself: the return is present in the sentence, yet the very next image cannot hold it. The word family binds worker and wage together, while the pierced bag shows the failure between receiving and retaining.
ALSO GROWS
śākhār: Wages, hire, reward
שָׂכָר
This is the return the worker earns, which the verse immediately places in a leaking container.
śākhīr: Hired worker
שָׂכִיר
The worker’s name grows from the same root as his wages, joining labor and its return in one word family.
THE PATTERN
An abundance of inputs does not by itself produce a satisfying return.
You shall bring out much seed into the field, and gather but little in; for the locust shall devour it.And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall turn your bread back to you by weight. You shall eat, and not be filled.And he said to them, Watch, and guard yourselves against grasping, for a person's life does not lie in the overflow of what they hold.THE THREAD
The lover of silver is not filled with silver, and the lover of the crowd is not filled with the harvest. This too is vapor.Haggai’s “enough” and Ecclesiastes’ “satisfied” share the Hebrew root שׂבע (ś-b-ʿ), to be sated or have one’s fill. The shared root reveals the same question beneath both verses: whether more provision or silver can actually reach satiety.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us