What Does Jeremiah 12:13 Mean?

They have sown wheat, and they shall reap thorns. They have sickened themselves, and they shall not profit. They shall be ashamed of your harvest, because of the burning of the LORD's anger.

Jeremiah 12:13 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns: they have put themselves to pain, but shall not profit: and they shall be ashamed of your revenues because of the fierce anger of the LORD.

THE KEY

The harvest reveals what the seed concealed: labor can return thorns instead of nourishment.

THE MEANING

A field can return thorns where wheat was sown; effort does not guarantee a nourishing outcome. Here pain spent in the field brings no profit, and shame stands under the fierce anger of the LORD.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that effort alone guarantees a fruitful return.

THE ROOT

זָרְעוּ

zāreʿû

GROWS FROM

זרע

The root ⁨זרע⁩ (z-r-ʿ; zāraʿ) means to sow or scatter seed.

“have sown” in this verse is zāreʿû. English makes sowing sound like one isolated act, but ⁨זרע⁩ carries both the verb “to sow” and the noun “seed, offspring”: the act already contains the future it releases. Here the field’s return exposes the gap between what is sown as wheat and what finally grows as thorns.

ALSO GROWS

zeraʿ: Seed; offspring.

זֶרַע

The same root names both what is planted and what continues from it, linking the sowing in the verse to the future the field produces.

zārûaʿ: Sown; that which has been seeded.

זָרוּעַ

This form keeps attention on what has been placed in the ground, making the painful harvest a revelation of what the sowing has become.

קָצָרוּ

qāṣārû

GROWS FROM

קצר

The root ⁨קצר⁩ (q-ṣ-r; qāṣar) carries the senses of cutting down or reaping and, in a related use, being short.

English “reap” centers receiving a result; ⁨קצר⁩ carries the sense of cutting down and gathering, while ⁨קֹצֶר⁩ (qōṣer) names shortness. That shared root lets the harvest echo something cut short: effort is spent, yet no useful yield extends from it.

ALSO GROWS

qāṣîr: Harvest.

קָצִיר

This noun comes from the same root as “reap,” naming the gathered yield that exposes the field’s result.

qōṣer: Shortness; a shortened state.

קֹצֶר

It shares the root’s consonants and adds an echo of being cut short, fitting the verse’s pain without profit.

THE PATTERN

Sowing and reaping are linked: the harvest brings the seed’s consequence into view.

Even as I have seen, those who plow crookedness and sow toil reap it.

Job 4:8 · SDVThe harvest returns the character of what was sown, just as wheat gives way to thorns here.

Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.

Galatians 6:7 · SDVThis states the sowing-and-reaping connection directly: what is planted shapes what comes back.

Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.

Psalm 126:5 · SDVThe same pattern can carry a changed outcome, as tears sown are met by joy at harvest.

THE THREAD

All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.

Genesis 8:22 · SDV

Jeremiah’s “sown” and Genesis’s “seedtime” carry the root ⁨זרע⁩ (z-r-ʿ), while “reap” and “harvest” share ⁨קצר⁩ (q-ṣ-r). Genesis names seedtime and harvest as paired rhythms; Jeremiah reveals the pain when that same rhythm yields thorns instead of nourishment.

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