What Does Micah 7:13 Mean?
And the land will be emptied because of those who settle in it, for the fruit of their doings.
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
Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.THE KEY
The land’s ruin is the fruit of its inhabitants’ deeds, and Hebrew’s word for desolation also carries the shock of being appalled.
THE MEANING
The shared ground of a community bears the results of how its inhabitants act. Its desolation is not detached from them; it is the fruit of their deeds. The Hebrew word also carries a sense of being appalled, so the ruin includes the shock of what those actions produce.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a community’s devastation is unrelated to how its people act.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁמָמָה
lishmamah
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
To be desolated or laid waste; also to be appalled or stunned.
“emptied” in this verse is lishmamah. The same root can name desolation and being appalled, joining the ruined condition to the shock it produces. Here, the land’s devastation is linked to the fruit of its inhabitants’ actions.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, a wasteland.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun echoes the land’s condition in the verse, while the root also carries the sense of being appalled by ruin.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
This verb shows that the root can name both devastation and the shock associated with it.
מִפְּרִי
mipri
GROWS FROM
פרה
To bear fruit, be fruitful, or increase.
“fruit” in this verse is mipri. The word is concrete produce: what the inhabitants’ actions bear. Its link to the verb for being fruitful makes the image vivid, what is done grows into conditions people inhabit.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit or be fruitful.
פָּרָה
The verb names the process behind the fruit: actions bear an outcome.
peri: Fruit, produce.
פְּרִי
This noun names the result as something produced, which the verse connects to the land’s desolation.
THE PATTERN
People inhabit the conditions their actions produce.
Say to the aligned one that it shall be well with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped crookedness, you have eaten the fruit of lies, because you leaned your full weight upon your way, in the multitude of your strong men.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Say to the aligned one that it shall be well with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.Isaiah repeats the Hebrew phrase pəri maʿalalehem (פְּרִי מַעֲלְלֵיהֶם, “fruit of their doings”). Micah ties that fruit to the land’s desolation; Isaiah shows people eating the fruit, making the consequence something they live from.
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