What Does Mark 4:29 Mean?
But when the fruit is handed over, straightway he sends out the sickle, because the harvest is standing here.
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
But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.THE KEY
The sickle enters because the fruit has yielded and the harvest is already present; the cut answers ripeness, it does not create it.
THE MEANING
When the fruit yields, the sickle goes in at once because the harvest has arrived. Ripeness marks the moment when growth gives way to gathering.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The sickle does not make the harvest arrive; the harvest is already present before it enters.
THE ROOT
θερισμός
therismos
GROWS FROM
θερίζω
therizō
to reap
The word for harvest grows from the verb for reaping, holding the season and its action together. The sickle comes because this reaping-time is already here.
ALSO GROWS
therizō: to reap
θερίζω
Galatians uses this same word family for reaping in its due season.
theristēs: reaper
θεριστής
The reaper is named from the same stem, tying the one who gathers to the season of gathering.
παραδῷ
paradoi
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
to give; in the compound παραδίδωμι (paradidōmi), to hand over or deliver
“handed over” in this verse is paradoi. The verb translated “brought forth” comes from a word for giving or handing over, and here it carries the sense of yielding. The fruit’s yielding marks the point when it can be gathered.
ALSO GROWS
didōmi: to give
δίδωμι
The verb’s underlying sense makes the fruit’s ripeness feel like a yielding into the next stage.
paradosis: tradition; something handed down
παράδοσις
This related word carries the same movement of handing something along, echoing the fruit’s yielding to the harvest.
THE PATTERN
Gathering follows ripeness: the season arrives through growth, and the harvest comes when its time is present.
All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.Be slow to heat therefore, brethren, until the arrival of the LORD. Look, the one who works the soil waits for the costly fruit of the earth, and is slow to heat over it until he takes in the early and late rain.While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.THE THREAD
While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.Mark’s word for “harvest” and Galatians’ word for “reap” come from the same Greek word family: θερισμός (therismos, harvest) and θερίζω (therizō, reap). Both hold the action within its season: in Mark the harvest has arrived, and in Galatians it comes in due season.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us