What Does Hosea 10:13 Mean in the King James?
Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.
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 path you trust grows a harvest that becomes your food: you end up living on what you cultivate.
THE MEANING
When you secure yourself in your own route and strength, the yield is crookedness and deception, and you take that yield into yourself as food. The verse speaks now as a pattern of trust becoming nourishment: what you lean on shapes what sustains you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that confidence in your own plans or strength proves they will lead you well; certainty can itself be part of the crop that deceives you.
THE ROOT
קְצַרְתֶּם
qetsartem
GROWS FROM
קצר
To be short or cut short; also to reap or harvest.
“reaped” in this verse is qetsartem. The root carries both reaping and shortness: harvest is what remains after cutting. Here, the yield is gathered from what was cultivated, then becomes the very thing consumed.
ALSO GROWS
qatsir: Harvest, reaping.
קָצִיר
Names the gathered yield, making the verse’s harvest image part of the same root family.
qatsar: Short, cut short.
קָצָר
The shared root lets reaping carry the sense of cutting down; what is harvested is what remains after the cut.
בָּטַחְתָּ
batachta
GROWS FROM
בטח
To trust, feel secure, or rely upon.
“trusted” in this verse is batachta. This root holds trust and security together. The verse points to what feels like shelter, the reader’s own route and strength, and shows that this chosen security can yield deception.
ALSO GROWS
mivtaḥ: Security, confidence, or refuge.
מִבְטָח
A refuge is what one relies on; the verse names the reader’s own way and strength as the place of reliance.
beṭaḥ: Securely, confidently.
בֶּטַח
The adverbial branch shows batach as a lived sense of being secure, not only an inward opinion.
כָּחָשׁ
kachash
GROWS FROM
כחש
To lie, deny, or prove false; in another usage, to grow lean or fail.
The root can name both deception and failure. The “fruit of lies” is not merely a false statement: it is a yield that fails to provide what it promises.
ALSO GROWS
kicheish: To deny, disown, or lie.
כִּחֵשׁ
This verbal branch makes the lie an act of disavowal, illuminating the deception in the harvest.
kachash: To grow lean or fail.
כָּחַשׁ
The same root’s sense of failing or thinning out gives the fruit of deception a diminished yield.
THE PATTERN
What is sown into a path returns as its harvest and becomes the food that sustains the sower.
Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.Both verses use the root קצר (qatsar), “reap.” In 10:12 the yield is חֶסֶד (ḥesed, faithful love); here it is iniquity, revealing the same harvest mechanism receiving different cultivation.
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