What Does Jeremiah 12:13 Mean in the King James?

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.

Jeremiah 12:13 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

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.

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, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.

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

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

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

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

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

THE THREAD

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Genesis 8:22 · KJV

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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