What Does Leviticus 25:22 Mean?
And you shall sow the eighth year, and you shall still eat of the old store until the ninth year. Until what it brings in comes in, you shall eat of the old store.
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 ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.THE KEY
The harvest already gathered keeps feeding you while the next harvest is still on its way.
THE MEANING
You can be sowing now and still be nourished by what has already come in. The waiting between planting and fresh fruit does not mean provision has vanished; what is gathered continues to serve the present as new yield approaches.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that nourishment must come only from what is growing right now: what is already gathered remains real provision while new fruit is still coming.
THE ROOT
וּזְרַעְתֶּם
ûzeraʿtem and you
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
to sow or scatter seed
“sow” in this verse is ûzeraʿtem and you. Hebrew keeps sowing beside זֶרַע (zeraʿ), the word for both seed and offspring: planting carries life forward. Here, sowing begins while the previous yield still feeds the present, joining two harvest cycles in one moment.
ALSO GROWS
zeraʿ: seed; offspring
זֶרַע
The same root links the seed put into the ground with the life that grows from it.
zoreaʿ: one who sows; a sower
זֹרֵעַ
The sower gives the next cycle its beginning while relying on the provision already gathered.
יָשָׁן
yashan old or
GROWS FROM
ישן
y-sh-n
to grow old; to sleep or lie dormant
The root carries both the sense of being old and the sense of sleeping. The old store is provision that has remained through the interval, sustaining the present before new yield arrives.
ALSO GROWS
yashen: to sleep; be asleep
יָשֵׁן
This shared root brings a sense of what rests or remains in reserve into the word translated “old.”
shenah: sleep
שֵׁנָה
The related noun preserves the root’s sleeping sense alongside the verse’s aged store.
תְּבוּאָה
tevuʾah produce or
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ
to come or enter
Tevuʾah, produce or yield, comes from בוא (bo), “to come” or “enter”: it is what comes in. The verse places sowing and stored provision in the interval before the next yield arrives.
ALSO GROWS
bo: to come; enter
בּוֹא
This root gives the verse’s waiting for the produce to come in a concrete sense of arrival.
mavo: entrance; entry
מָבוֹא
This related word for an entrance echoes the movement of yield coming in.
THE PATTERN
Provision can remain present across the interval between sowing and the next harvest.
All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.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.Now the one who supplies seed to the sower supplies bread for eating, and fills out your sown seed, and makes grow the fruits of your alignment.THE THREAD
All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.Leviticus’s verb for sowing comes from זרע (z-r-ʿ), the root also present in Genesis’s “seedtime.” Genesis names the recurring rhythm; Leviticus shows how its gathered yield feeds the present while the next planting is already underway.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us