What Does Exodus 23:16 Mean in the King James?
And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
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
The verse holds the first yield and the year’s full gathering inside one cycle: what begins in the field returns from it as harvest.
THE MEANING
Your labor moves through a season when its first yield appears and a season when the harvest is gathered. The verse joins those moments in one cycle, keeping the beginning and the completion connected to the work sown in the field.
THE ROOT
אָסִיף
asif
GROWS FROM
אסף
To gather, collect, or bring together.
The word for ingathering comes from the root אסף (asaph, to gather). The same root can describe gathering produce in and gathering something away, so its image holds both collection and removal.
ALSO GROWS
asaph: Gather or collect; in Genesis 30:23, “taken away” reproach.
אָסַף
This branch shows that the root can describe gathering something in as well as gathering something away.
asif: Ingathering, the collection of the year’s produce.
אָסִיף
This is the verse’s harvest word, naming the season when the scattered yield is gathered together.
בִּכּוּרֵי
bikkurei
GROWS FROM
בכר
To be first, bring forth early, or be firstborn.
The word for firstfruits shares its root with the word for firstborn: it marks what comes first, before the full harvest arrives. Beside the year’s ingathering, the verse honors both the first emergence and the completed collection.
ALSO GROWS
bekhor: Firstborn.
בְּכוֹר
The shared root links the first yield of the field with what comes first in a family.
bikkurim: Firstfruits, the earliest produce.
בִּכּוּרִים
This related form names the first yield that the harvest feast recognizes.
THE PATTERN
What is sown in one season becomes the harvest gathered in another.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
And she conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away my reproach:The Hebrew word behind “ingathering” comes from אסף (asaph, to gather); the same root appears in “taken away” here. In Exodus it gathers produce in, while here it gathers reproach away, revealing that the root can name both collection and removal.
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