What Does Leviticus 26:20 Mean in the King James?
And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
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 land and the tree fail through the same verb, give: barrenness is creation’s giving withheld.
THE MEANING
Your strength runs out into emptiness; the land and trees do not give their increase. The verse names a condition where effort cannot produce its own return, because fruitfulness is received from the sources that bear it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sheer effort guarantees a yield: here strength is spent, yet nothing is produced.
THE ROOT
תִּתֵּן
tittēn
GROWS FROM
נתן
נתן (natan): give, set, place.
The land’s תִּתֵּן and the tree’s יִתֵּן are forms of נתן (natan, give); the Hebrew uses the same verb where English says “yield.” Increase is presented as something the land and tree give, not something human strength can make by itself.
ALSO GROWS
netinah: giving
נְתִינָה
This noun preserves the root’s sense of an act of giving, making the land’s and tree’s “yield” part of the same pattern.
natan: to give, set, or place
נָתַן
This root form makes explicit the verb concealed beneath the English “yield.”
mattan: gift
מַתָּן
This related form names what is given; it helps show increase as received provision.
לָרִיק
lariq
GROWS FROM
ריק
ריק (riq): empty; become or make empty.
The strength is spent לָרִיק (lariq, into emptiness), while the land and trees give nothing back. This root lets “in vain” carry the image of strength emptied without a return.
ALSO GROWS
reqam: empty-handed, without result
רֵיקָם
This related form sharpens the verse’s picture: strength is spent, but the hand receives no yield.
hēriq: to empty out
הֵרִיק
This verb shares the root’s consonants and evokes strength poured out into emptiness.
THE PATTERN
Fruitfulness is received from its source; effort alone cannot guarantee a yield.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.THE THREAD
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.Genesis uses נתן (natan, give) in “I have given,” the same root behind the land’s and tree’s “yield” here. It opens this verse as the withholding of a gift-bearing pattern: the land and trees remain, yet their giving does not arrive.
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