What Does Genesis 4:3 Mean in the King James?
And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.
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 offering begins as the ground’s fruit: what Cain brings is a return of what the earth has already yielded.
THE MEANING
The verse places you in a rhythm of receiving and returning: the fruit in your hands first grows from the ground. What you bring before the LORD is a yield you did not create from nothing.
THE ROOT
אֲדָמָה
adamah
GROWS FROM
א־ד־ם
Red or earth-colored; the word-family connects the soil with the human formed from it.
The ground is more than the setting for the offering: its word-family also names the human. Cain brings fruit from the same ground from which human life is formed, so the gift and the giver share an earthly source.
ALSO GROWS
adam: human; ground-being
אָדָם
The shared word-family links the person bringing the offering with the soil that yields it.
Edom: red
אֱדוֹם
This branch preserves the root’s red or earth-colored association, echoing the soil’s substance.
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ה
To bear fruit, become fruitful, or increase.
English fruit can sound like a finished object, but peri belongs to a word-family of bearing fruit and increase. The offering is the ground’s increase made visible and brought as a gift.
ALSO GROWS
parah: to be fruitful; to bear fruit
פָּרָה
The verb shows the living increase carried within the fruit Cain brings.
peri: fruit; yield
פְּרִי
The noun names the yield itself, the ground’s increase brought before the LORD.
THE PATTERN
Life’s yield comes from the ground before it can be brought forth or returned.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.THE THREAD
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Genesis 2:7 joins adam, the human, to adamah, the ground; Genesis 4:3 names that same ground as the source of Cain’s fruit. The offering comes from the soil that also names the human who brings it.
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