What Does Leviticus 25:21 Mean?
Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall make what it brings in for three years.
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
Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.THE KEY
The blessing is the command that makes one year’s yield carry through three.
THE MEANING
The verse presents provision as arriving ahead of need: the sixth year’s yield sustains the years that follow. For you now, a season of rest or restraint does not have to mean that provision has stopped; what comes in during it can carry forward.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a season of rest must be a season without provision: here, one year’s yield carries into the years that follow.
THE ROOT
בִּרְכָתִי
birkhati
GROWS FROM
ברך
To bless; the same consonants also form berekh, “knee.”
The blessing takes form in a real harvest, not an abstraction. Its shared consonants with berekh, “knee,” suggest favor bending toward its receiver; here that favor appears as a yield that spans years.
ALSO GROWS
berakhah: Blessing
בְּרָכָה
The same word family names the blessing commanded onto the sixth year.
berekh: Knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared consonants give the blessing an image of favor bending toward the one who receives it.
barukh: Blessed
בָּרוּךְ
This related form shows the blessing as a state that can be received and lived in.
תְּבוּאָה
tevu’ah
GROWS FROM
בוא
To come, enter, or arrive.
“what it brings in” in this verse is tevu’ah. The word for produce is related to the root for coming in. The harvest is pictured as what arrives, and in this verse what comes in during one year reaches into the years beyond it.
ALSO GROWS
bo: To come or enter
בּוֹא
It reveals the arrival contained in the word for yield.
mavo: Entrance or coming in
מָבוֹא
Like produce, it names something that comes into a place.
צִוִּיתִי
tsiviti
GROWS FROM
צוה
To command or appoint.
The yield is presented as provision appointed for this particular year, with its reach extending across more than one season. The wording makes the abundance part of the command itself.
ALSO GROWS
mitzvah: Command or charge
מִצְוָה
It shares the root’s sense of an instruction that sets something in motion.
tzav: Command
צַו
This related form keeps the verse’s emphasis on provision being commanded.
THE PATTERN
Provision can arrive ahead of a season so that what comes in carries beyond the moment of receiving.
And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered a double portion of bread, two omers for each one, and all the lifted ones of the assembly came and told Moses.For thus says the LORD God of Israel, the jar of meal shall not run out, nor shall the flask of oil run short, until the day the LORD sends rain upon the ground.And God is able to make all favor overflow toward you, so that you, always holding all you need in everything, may overflow into every good work.THE THREAD
The LORD shall command the blessing upon you in your storehouses, and in all that you stretch out your hand to. He shall bless you in the land that the LORD your God gives you.This verse repeats the pairing of commanding a blessing and connects it to storehouses and the work of the hand. The shared ברך (barak, “bless”) root shows the blessing taking form in provision.
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