What Does Matthew 21:34 Mean?
And when the season of the fruits drew near, he sent his servants to those who work the soil, to take hold of his fruits.
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 when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.THE KEY
The men called “husbandmen” are literally earth-workers: the fruit is the visible yield of entrusted labor, and its season brings the sender to claim it.
THE MEANING
What is in your care reaches a season when its yield becomes visible and ready to be received. That moment brings the relationship between tending, fruitfulness, and accountability into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that labor alone makes whatever grows under your care wholly your own.
THE ROOT
καρπούς
karpous
GROWS FROM
καρπ-
karp-
Fruit, produce, yield, the outcome of growth.
Both mentions of “fruit” belong to the same word family: the produce of growth, made visible. The servants are sent to receive an actual yield, not merely to acknowledge the promise of one.
ALSO GROWS
karpophoreō: Bear or produce fruit.
καρποφορέω
This verb makes fruit the result of a process of growth, the very outcome the servants are sent to collect.
akarpos: Fruitless, unfruitful.
ἄκαρπος
Its opposite is defined by the absence of fruit, showing how καρπός (karpos, fruit or yield) names the visible outcome by which growth is assessed.
γεωργοῖς
geōrgois
GROWS FROM
γεωργ-
geōrg-
Earth-worker or farmer, from γῆ (gē, earth) + ἔργον (ergon, work).
“those who work the soil” in this verse is geōrgois. “Husbandmen” translates γεωργοί (geōrgoi, farmers), literally earth-workers. The servants come to the people working the soil for its fruit, binding entrusted labor to its yield.
ALSO GROWS
geōrgia: Farming, agriculture.
γεωργία
The related word names the work of cultivation that precedes the harvest.
geōrgeō: Farm, cultivate.
γεωργέω
This verb makes the tenants’ role concrete: their work is tending the ground from which fruit comes.
λαβεῖν
labein
GROWS FROM
λαμβαν-
lamban-
Take, receive, obtain.
“take hold of” in this verse is labein. The word translated “receive” is a form of λαμβάνω (lambanō, take or receive), which can carry the sense of taking hold of what is handed over. The harvest moves from the vineyard toward its claimant; receiving is the action that completes the gathering.
ALSO GROWS
paralambanō: Receive, take along.
παραλαμβάνω
The shared λαμβαν- stem keeps the active sense of taking something into one’s care.
katalambanō: Take hold of, seize, overtake; grasp or comprehend.
καταλαμβάνω
This compound makes the grasping force in the word family visible, sharpening the sense of fruit being gathered into possession.
THE PATTERN
What is entrusted to grow reaches a season when its fruit becomes visible and ready to be gathered.
And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.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
You did not pick me out, but I picked you out and set you, that you may go and bear fruit, and that your fruit may remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my nature, he may give you.The same Greek word family, καρπός (karpos, fruit or yield), connects the passages. Here the fruit is meant to remain, opening the harvest in Matthew into a wider picture of yield that continues beyond the moment it is gathered.
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