What Does Matthew 13:26 Mean?
But when the blade sprang up and bore fruit, then the weeds came into view also.
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 blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.THE KEY
The crop’s fruiting is the moment the tares come into view.
THE MEANING
What is growing within you does not stay hidden forever. As your life comes to fruit, other growth beside it also becomes visible. The verse holds both revelations in the same moment: fruit arrives, and the tares are seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is unseen is absent: hidden growth may already be there, waiting to come into view.
THE ROOT
ἐφάνη
ephanē
GROWS FROM
φαίν-
phain-
To appear or come into view; to bring to light.
“came into view” in this verse is ephanē. The verb says the tares come into view when the crop bears fruit; it does not say they began growing then. Ripening makes visible what had been growing beside the crop.
ALSO GROWS
phanerós: Visible, manifest
φανερός
It shares the family of words for what has come into view, echoing the tares’ change from hidden to seen.
phaneróō: To reveal, make visible
φανερόω
This related verb makes explicit the movement from what is concealed to what is disclosed.
καρπός
karpós
GROWS FROM
καρπ-
karp-
Fruit, yield, or result.
The Greek word can name both a plant’s fruit and the result of something. Here, fruit is not only the crop’s yield; its arrival marks the point when neighboring growth becomes legible.
ALSO GROWS
karpophoréō: To bear fruit
καρποφορέω
It names the process of producing fruit, the stage that coincides here with the tares becoming visible.
ákarpos: Fruitless, without fruit
ἄκαρπος
This related word frames fruit as the distinguishing yield whose presence marks a stage of growth.
THE PATTERN
Maturity makes the character of growth visible through 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.For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.But the fruit of the breath is love, joy, wholeness, slowness to heat, kindness, goodness, trust,THE THREAD
For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.Luke uses the same Greek word καρπός (karpós, fruit): what a tree yields makes it known. Matthew adds that as fruit appears, the tares growing beside the crop also come into view.
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