What Does Leviticus 26:4 Mean?
Then I will give you rain in its season, and the land shall give its yield, and the trees of the field shall 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
Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.THE KEY
One verb repeats through God, ground, and tree: giving is the pattern that turns rain into fruit.
THE MEANING
The verse presents provision as a living sequence: rain arrives in its appointed time, the land yields, and the trees give fruit. Receiving is not the end of provision; what is given moves through soil and tree into nourishment.
THE ROOT
נָתַן
natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
“give its yield” in this verse is natan. The Hebrew repeats this root three times: God gives rain, the land gives its yield, and the tree gives its fruit. English can make these sound like separate acts, while the repeated root reveals one continuous movement of giving.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift
מַתָּנָה
Rain is presented as a gift that enters the living cycle of growth.
netinah: Giving; an act of giving
נְתִינָה
This branch makes visible the shared action joining the giver, the ground, and the tree.
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פרה
To bear fruit or be fruitful.
“give their fruit” in this verse is peri. The tree’s fruit belongs to the same word family as being fruitful. The verse’s last image is not a detached product but the visible expression of life bearing fruit.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit; to be fruitful
פָּרָה
This verb names the living process that the tree’s fruit makes visible.
peri: Fruit; produce
פְּרִי
The noun names the result of that fruitfulness, completing the movement from life to yield.
THE PATTERN
Provision enters as gift and moves through living creation into nourishment.
And God said, "Let the earth sprout green growth, the seed-bearing plant, and the fruit tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in it, upon the earth." And it was so.And I will give you the rain of your land in its season, the first rain and the late rain, so that you may gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil.So then neither is the one who plants anything, nor the one who gives to drink, but God, who makes it grow.THE THREAD
And I will give you the rain of your land in its season, the first rain and the late rain, so that you may gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil.The Hebrew repeats נתן (natan, give) for the rain in both verses. Here that same giving reaches into the ground and tree, showing rain as the beginning of a larger movement that ends in gathered fruit.
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