What Does Numbers 13:27 Mean in the King James?

And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.

Numbers 13:27 · 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 land’s abundance is described as something that flows, and the fruit they carry makes that movement visible.

THE MEANING

Provision takes visible form: what nourishes the land overflows, and its fruit can be held in the hand. The verse joins promise and evidence, showing abundance as a living yield rather than an abstraction.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The verse unsettles the belief that provision is only an idea or a promise for later: here, the fruit is already visible and carried.

THE ROOT

זָבַת

zāvat

GROWS FROM

זוב

To flow or gush.

“floweth” in this verse is zāvat. The Hebrew word ⁨זָבַת⁩ (zāvat, flowing) comes from ⁨זוב⁩ (zûv, to flow or gush). The same root describes concrete bodily outflow elsewhere, so the land’s abundance is pictured as movement; the fruit makes that flow tangible.

ALSO GROWS

zōv: Flow or discharge.

זֹב

This noun shares the root’s consonants and names flowing itself, giving the land’s image a sense of active outpouring.

zōvō: His discharge or flow.

זֹבוֹ

This form appears in Leviticus 15:2, with the same root and a possessive ending; it shows that ⁨זוב⁩ describes a concrete outflow.

THE PATTERN

Provision becomes legible through what flows from the land and the fruit it produces.

And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Exodus 3:8 · KJVThe same image of a land flowing with milk and honey makes abundance visible as something the land yields.

A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;

Deuteronomy 8:8 · KJVThe land’s abundance appears in the concrete foods and fruit it brings forth.

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 15:5 · KJVFruit makes the life flowing through the vine visible in what its branches produce.

THE THREAD

And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Exodus 3:8 · KJV

The same Hebrew root ⁨זוב⁩ (zûv, to flow) describes the land in both verses. Numbers adds the fruit they can carry, opening the image from a flowing promise into tangible evidence of its yield.

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