What Does Leviticus 26:20 Mean?
And your strength shall be used up for emptiness, for your land shall not give its yield, nor shall the trees of the land give their fruit.
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 your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.THE KEY
The land and the tree fail through the same verb, give: barrenness is creation’s giving withheld.
THE MEANING
Your strength runs out into emptiness; the land and trees do not give their increase. The verse names a condition where effort cannot produce its own return, because fruitfulness is received from the sources that bear it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sheer effort guarantees a yield: here strength is spent, yet nothing is produced.
THE ROOT
תִּתֵּן
tittēn
GROWS FROM
נתן
נתן (natan): give, set, place.
The land’s תִּתֵּן and the tree’s יִתֵּן are forms of נתן (natan, give); the Hebrew uses the same verb where English says “yield.” Increase is presented as something the land and tree give, not something human strength can make by itself.
ALSO GROWS
netinah: giving
נְתִינָה
This noun preserves the root’s sense of an act of giving, making the land’s and tree’s “yield” part of the same pattern.
natan: to give, set, or place
נָתַן
This root form makes explicit the verb concealed beneath the English “yield.”
mattan: gift
מַתָּן
This related form names what is given; it helps show increase as received provision.
לָרִיק
lariq
GROWS FROM
ריק
ריק (riq): empty; become or make empty.
“for emptiness” in this verse is lariq. The strength is spent לָרִיק (lariq, into emptiness), while the land and trees give nothing back. This root lets “in vain” carry the image of strength emptied without a return.
ALSO GROWS
reqam: empty-handed, without result
רֵיקָם
This related form sharpens the verse’s picture: strength is spent, but the hand receives no yield.
hēriq: to empty out
הֵרִיק
This verb shares the root’s consonants and evokes strength poured out into emptiness.
THE PATTERN
Fruitfulness is received from its source; effort alone cannot guarantee a yield.
And God said, "Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant upon the face of all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit with seed in it. It shall be yours for food."A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.THE THREAD
And God said, "Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant upon the face of all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit with seed in it. It shall be yours for food."Genesis uses נתן (natan, give) in “I have given,” the same root behind the land’s and tree’s “yield” here. It opens this verse as the withholding of a gift-bearing pattern: the land and trees remain, yet their giving does not arrive.
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