What Does Leviticus 19:10 Mean?
And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor gather up every grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the bowed down and the sojourner. I am the LORD your God.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.THE KEY
The harvest is not fully yours to collect: its unpicked edge is already provision for the poor and the outsider.
THE MEANING
This verse names your harvest as something with a boundary: the last grapes remain available to people who are poor or living as outsiders. The land’s yield is not exhausted by what you collect; part of it is provision held open for them under God’s claim. That makes belonging to God visible in the limits placed on possession.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that producing or owning something makes every part of it yours to take. Here, the yield already includes a share for people who lack land or secure belonging.
THE ROOT
תַּעֲזֹב
ta'azov
GROWS FROM
עזב
ʿazav
to leave behind, leave, or forsake
“leave” in this verse is ta'azov. This root can describe abandonment, but here leaving becomes provision rather than neglect. The harvest remains deliberately incomplete so that others can gather what the owner does not collect.
ALSO GROWS
ʿazav: to leave or forsake
עָזַב
The verb carries both the ordinary act of leaving and the possibility of abandonment; this verse shows what that act means when the remainder is reserved for others.
ʿazuvah: forsaken or desolate
עֲזוּבָה
This related form carries the root’s harsher shade, making the verse’s choice clear: what is left behind can become desolation, or it can be made into provision.
גֵּר
ger
GROWS FROM
גור
gur
to sojourn or dwell as an alien
“sojourner” in this verse is ger. Ger names a resident outsider, someone who lives on land without the security of full belonging. The same root describes the people addressed as sojourners with God elsewhere, placing the outsider and the landholder under a shared condition.
ALSO GROWS
gur: to sojourn or dwell as an alien
גּוּר
The verb behind ger describes a way of living on land, not merely being unfamiliar to its people.
megurim: sojournings or temporary residences
מְגוּרִים
This related form names the condition of dwelling temporarily, echoing the outsider’s place within a land no human finally owns.
עָנִי
ani
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿanah
to be afflicted, humbled, or brought low
“bowed down” in this verse is ani. The word for poor is connected to being afflicted or brought low, giving the verse’s provision a human weight beyond a simple category of income. What remains is for people in a pressed condition, alongside the outsider who lacks secure belonging.
ALSO GROWS
ʿanah: to afflict or humble
עָנָה
The verb exposes the root’s sense of being brought low, shading the poor person’s condition with vulnerability.
ʿoni: affliction, misery, or poverty
עֳנִי
This noun shows the closeness between poverty and affliction in the same word family.
THE PATTERN
Provision is built into abundance when some of what is held or gathered remains accessible to those who lack.
But in the seventh year you shall let it drop and leave it, that the poor of your people may eat, and what is left over the beasts of the field shall eat. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.When you cut down your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you do not turn back to take hold of it. It is for the sojourner, for the fatherless, and for the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the making of your hands.He answered and said to them, Whoever has two tunics, let him give a share to the one who has none; and whoever has food, let him do likewise.THE THREAD
The land shall not be sold for good, for the land is mine; for you are sojourners and those who settle beside me.The word translated “strangers” here is גֵּרִים (gerim), the plural of גֵּר (ger), the same word used for “stranger” in this verse. The land belongs to God, so even those who hold it dwell on it as sojourners; the person without land and the person with it share a deeper condition.
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