What Does Deuteronomy 11:10 Mean in the King James?
For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs:
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Here, seed is not the only thing being cultivated: the garden also depends on the foot to keep its water moving.
THE MEANING
The verse makes you notice the mechanism beneath growth: seed is sown, then water is delivered by the foot. What flourishes can depend on how tightly nourishment must be managed; entering a new inheritance means meeting a different relationship between land and water. The next verse names that difference as rain from heaven.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that growth proves you must personally control every drop that sustains it.
THE ROOT
זַרְעֶךָ
zar‘ekha
GROWS FROM
זרע
To sow or scatter; זֶרַע (zeraʿ) means seed and offspring.
English separates the seed from the act of sowing, but Hebrew holds both in the same root, and uses the same noun for offspring. The seed already carries the language of future life: what is planted contains a future beyond the hand that plants it.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow or scatter seed.
זָרַע
This is the action performed on the seed in the verse, joined to it by the same three consonants: ז־ר־ע.
zeraʿ: Seed; offspring or descendants.
זֶרַע
The same word can name what is planted and future generations, linking cultivation with the continuation of life.
וְהִשְׁקִיתָ
ve-hishqita
GROWS FROM
שקה
To give drink or water; שָׁקָה (shaqah) is the verb “to give drink.”
“wateredst” in this verse is ve-hishqita. The Hebrew casts watering as giving the land a drink. With “thy foot” beside it, nourishment is pictured as a human-managed process, not an abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
shaqah: To give drink; to water.
שָׁקָה
This verb names the act behind the garden’s watering: the land receives water as something given to drink.
mashqeh: A drink or beverage; also a cupbearer.
מַשְׁקֶה
This noun from the same root carries the sense of drink, echoing the verse’s picture of watering the land.
לְרִשְׁתָּהּ
lerishtah
GROWS FROM
ירש
To take possession or inherit; in the causative form, to dispossess.
“possess” in this verse is lerishtah. The word family holds inheritance and dispossession together: taking possession also means that possession changes hands. The verse’s language of entering an inheritance carries that transfer within it.
ALSO GROWS
yārash: To take possession, inherit, or dispossess.
יָרַשׁ
This is the root verb behind “possess,” and its range makes possession part of a transfer, not an isolated claim.
yerushah: Inheritance or possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun from the same root names what is received when one enters to possess the land.
hōrîsh: To dispossess or drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form of the root shows the other side of taking possession: someone else is displaced.
THE PATTERN
The land’s fruitfulness depends on water received from beyond the cultivator’s control.
But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven:Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it.That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.THE THREAD
Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.The Hebrew word translated “sowed” comes from זרע (zeraʿ), the same root as “seed” here, which also names offspring. The hundredfold harvest makes visible the future already held in the seed’s name.
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