What Does Luke 6:43 Mean?
For a good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good 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
For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.THE KEY
The fruit is the tree’s hidden nature made visible.
THE MEANING
What lives at your center takes shape in what comes from you. The fruit makes the inner source visible in ordinary outcomes, so the two cannot be permanently separated. What appears outwardly reveals the life within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that what you express has nothing to do with what is rooted in you, or that a source can keep producing its opposite forever.
THE ROOT
ἀγαθὸν
agathon
GROWS FROM
ἀγαθ-
agath-
Good, beneficial; a quality associated with well-being.
The same stem describes both what is good and the act of doing good, so goodness is more than a label: it expresses itself in what it produces. The tree’s inward quality becomes visible in its yield.
ALSO GROWS
agathopoieō: Do good; act beneficially.
ἀγαθοποιέω
The same stem moves from the quality of being good to the action that carries goodness outward.
agathōsynē: Goodness; generous virtue.
ἀγαθωσύνη
This noun names the quality that the verse pictures as active and fruitful, rather than detached from its effects.
καρπόν
karpon
GROWS FROM
καρπ-
karp-
Fruit, produce; what a living source yields.
The fruit-word also appears in words for bearing fruit and being fruitless, making yield a sign of whether a source is productive. The image holds the outcome together with the life that produces it.
ALSO GROWS
karpophoreō: Bear fruit; be fruitful.
καρποφορέω
This verb turns the noun’s image into an ongoing process of yielding.
akarpos: Fruitless; unproductive.
ἄκαρπος
The same fruit-stem names the absence of yield, clarifying how directly the verse links a source with what it brings forth.
THE PATTERN
A living source reproduces its kind in what it yields.
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.Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a vine bear figs? Neither can a spring yield both salt and sweet water.But the fruit of the breath is love, joy, wholeness, slowness to heat, kindness, goodness, trust, gentleness, a grip on oneself; against such things there is no instruction.THE THREAD
A good human brings out good from the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human brings out evil from the evil treasure of the heart, for from the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.The same Greek word for “good” appears here: ἀγαθός (agathos), meaning “good” or “beneficial.” The image moves from tree to heart: what comes outwardly is the visible yield of what is already within.
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