What Does Mark 4:29 Mean in the King James?
But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.
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 sickle enters because the fruit has yielded and the harvest is already present; the cut answers ripeness, it does not create it.
THE MEANING
When the fruit yields, the sickle goes in at once because the harvest has arrived. Ripeness marks the moment when growth gives way to gathering.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The sickle does not make the harvest arrive; the harvest is already present before it enters.
THE ROOT
θερισμός
therismos
GROWS FROM
θερίζω
therizō
to reap
The word for harvest grows from the verb for reaping, holding the season and its action together. The sickle comes because this reaping-time is already here.
ALSO GROWS
therizō: to reap
θερίζω
Galatians uses this same word family for reaping in its due season.
theristēs: reaper
θεριστής
The reaper is named from the same stem, tying the one who gathers to the season of gathering.
παραδῷ
paradoi
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
to give; in the compound παραδίδωμι (paradidōmi), to hand over or deliver
The verb translated “brought forth” comes from a word for giving or handing over, and here it carries the sense of yielding. The fruit’s yielding marks the point when it can be gathered.
ALSO GROWS
didōmi: to give
δίδωμι
The verb’s underlying sense makes the fruit’s ripeness feel like a yielding into the next stage.
paradosis: tradition; something handed down
παράδοσις
This related word carries the same movement of handing something along, echoing the fruit’s yielding to the harvest.
THE PATTERN
Gathering follows ripeness: the season arrives through growth, and the harvest comes when its time is present.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.THE THREAD
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.Mark’s word for “harvest” and Galatians’ word for “reap” come from the same Greek word family: θερισμός (therismos, harvest) and θερίζω (therizō, reap). Both hold the action within its season: in Mark the harvest has arrived, and in Galatians it comes in due season.
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