What Does Leviticus 25:12 Mean?
For it is a ram's horn year; it shall be set apart for you. From the field you shall eat what it brings in.
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
For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.THE KEY
The field’s “increase” is what comes in from the ground, making Jubilee provision something received and set apart.
THE MEANING
The Jubilee is set apart, and the field’s yield is food to be eaten. The word for “increase” carries the sense of what comes in: provision arrives as what the ground brings forth. This speaks now wherever a pause in ordinary control reveals that nourishment is already arriving.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that only what I personally produce or secure can sustain me gives way here: the field’s yield itself becomes food.
THE ROOT
תְּבוּאָה
tevu’ah
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ
To come, enter, or arrive.
“what it brings in” in this verse is tevu’ah. English “increase” can sound like an abstract rise in quantity, but תְּבוּאָה (tevu’ah) names produce or yield and grows from the root בוא (bo), “to come, enter.” The field’s provision is what comes in from the ground, received as food in the Jubilee year.
ALSO GROWS
bo: To come or enter.
בּוֹא
The root gives the yield its sense of what comes forth or arrives.
mavo: Entrance or entry.
מָבוֹא
This branch preserves the root’s movement of coming in, echoing the arrival of the field’s produce.
קֹדֶשׁ
qodesh
GROWS FROM
קדשׁ
q-d-sh
To set apart, make distinct, or consecrate.
The Jubilee year is marked as set apart, and that status shapes how its yield is received. The same root names both what is set apart and the sanctuary set apart as a place, so sacredness here reaches into the field’s food.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; consecrated.
קָדוֹשׁ
It shares the root’s sense of being marked out as distinct, as the Jubilee year is here.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The sanctuary and the Jubilee share the language of being set apart, while this verse carries that quality into the field’s yield.
THE PATTERN
When a season loosens the usual claims on production, the ground’s yield becomes direct provision beyond what one person stores or secures.
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.Look at the birds of the air, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into storehouses; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?THE THREAD
And you shall set apart the fiftieth year, and proclaim a free flowing through all the land to all who settle in it. It shall be a ram's horn year for you, and you shall turn back each to his holding, and each to his family you shall turn back.The same word, “jubile,” names the year in both verses. Here, liberty and return define that year; verse 12 shows the field’s yield as provision within that release.
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