What Does Matthew 7:16 Mean?
You will know them by their fruits. Do people gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?
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
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?THE KEY
A convincing disguise cannot change what a tree yields.
THE MEANING
A person’s nature becomes recognizable in what comes from them. A claim may sound persuasive, but the life it produces bears a distinct yield: grapes do not emerge from thorns, nor figs from thistles.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a convincing appearance or spiritual claim proves a voice trustworthy dissolves here; what that voice consistently produces reveals its nature.
THE ROOT
καρπῶν
karpōn
GROWS FROM
καρπ-
karp-
Fruit, yield, produce.
“fruits” in this verse is karpōn. The Greek word carries both the concrete fruit and the yield something produces. The verse makes a tree’s fruit legible as evidence of its nature: what comes forth cannot be separated from what bears it.
ALSO GROWS
karpophoreō: To bear or produce fruit.
καρποφορέω
This verb makes explicit the tree’s act of yielding: its nature becomes visible in what it produces.
karpophoria: Fruit-bearing, fruitfulness.
καρποφορία
This form names the resulting fruitfulness, showing that fruit is a sustained yield, not just an appearance.
ἐπιγνώσεσθε
epignōsesthe
GROWS FROM
γινωσκ-
ginōsk-
To know, recognize, perceive.
“know” in this verse is epignōsesthe. The verb here means to recognize or discern them. The fruit is what makes recognition possible: the verse joins knowing to what can actually be seen in a life.
ALSO GROWS
gnōsis: Knowledge.
γνῶσις
This noun shares the knowing root and highlights the recognition at the heart of the verse.
epignōsis: Recognition, knowledge.
ἐπίγνωσις
This related form echoes the verse’s language of recognizing someone by the yield they show.
THE PATTERN
A tree’s nature becomes visible in the fruit it produces.
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.So every good tree makes good fruit, but the rotten tree makes evil fruit.But the fruit of the breath is love, joy, wholeness, slowness to heat, kindness, goodness, trust,THE THREAD
So every good tree makes good fruit, but the rotten tree makes evil fruit.This verse repeats the same Greek word for fruit, καρπός (karpos), and makes the answer to the question explicit. Each tree yields fruit according to its nature, so the yield becomes a way to recognize the tree.
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