What Does Numbers 13:23 Mean in the King James?
And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs.
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
A single fruit-bearing branch carries enough abundance that two people must bear it together.
THE MEANING
Abundance has weight here: one cluster hangs from a cut branch, and two people carry it on a staff. The fruit makes the land’s life-giving abundance visible, tangible, and shared in the act of carrying.
THE ROOT
וַיִּכְרְתוּ
vayyikretu
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
cut, sever
The word translated “cut” comes from כרת (karat), a root that also appears in the phrase כָּרַת בְּרִית (karat berit), literally “cut a covenant.” The cluster is severed from the vine, while the same root can name the making of a bond; here the fruit is a tangible sign of a promised abundance.
ALSO GROWS
hikhrit: cut off; cause to cease
הִכְרִית
This form extends the root’s sense of severing, echoing the cluster’s detachment from the branch.
karat berit: make a covenant; literally, cut a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same root can describe a bond being made, connecting the cut fruit to the promise its abundance makes visible.
THE PATTERN
Life-bearing fruit becomes visible as provision and enters shared life through receiving.
He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;And all that believed were together, and had all things common;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
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.John names the living connection behind the image of a fruit-bearing branch: life joined to the vine bears fruit. Numbers makes that fruit tangible, a cluster large enough for two people to carry.
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