What Does Numbers 13:20 Mean?
And what the land is, whether it is fat or lean, whether there is wood in it, or not. And take firm hold of yourselves, and take some of the fruit of the land. Now it was the time, the time of the first ripe grapes.
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 what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land. Now the time was the time of the firstripe grapes.THE KEY
Courage here is the strength to carry the land’s first visible evidence in your hands.
THE MEANING
You can see a situation without forcing it into a favorable verdict: it may be rich or lean, wooded or bare, while its first fruit is already visible. Courage appears as the strength to carry what is actually ripening, without needing certainty about the whole harvest.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief that courage requires favorable conditions gives way: the land may be lean or bare, and the call to strength remains.
THE ROOT
וְהִתְחַזַּקְתֶּם
wehitḥazzaqtem
GROWS FROM
חזק
ḥazaq
Be strong; strengthen.
“take firm hold of yourselves” in this verse is wehitḥazzaqtem. The Hebrew form carries the sense of strengthening yourselves. Here that strength goes with looking closely and carrying actual produce, so courage takes the shape of staying able to face and report what is there.
ALSO GROWS
ḥazaq: Strong
חָזָק
The adjective makes clear that courage here has the texture of strength.
ḥizzēq: Strengthened; made strong
חִזֵּק
This form shows the root as an action: strength is something that can be made firm.
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פרה
parah
Bear fruit; be fruitful.
The noun for fruit belongs to the root of bearing fruit, and the name Ephraim is linked to being made fruitful even in affliction. Here fruit is concrete testimony: a sample that makes the land’s capacity visible.
ALSO GROWS
parah: Bear fruit; be fruitful
פָּרָה
The verb names the living process behind the fruit they are told to carry.
Ephraim: Fruitful
אֶפְרַיִם
Genesis 41:52 links the name to fruitfulness in affliction, showing the root’s reach beyond a harvest.
בִּכּוּרֵי
bikkurei
GROWS FROM
בכר
b-k-r
Be first; mark what comes first.
“firstripe” in this verse is bikkurei. The same root marks the firstborn and the firstfruits: it signals what comes first in sequence, not a full harvest. The verse places the report at the moment when the land’s promise has its first visible sign.
ALSO GROWS
bekhor: Firstborn
בְּכוֹר
The firstborn carries the root’s sense of what comes first.
bikkurim: Firstfruits
בִּכּוּרִים
This form applies the same firstness to the earliest yield.
THE PATTERN
A thing’s nature becomes visible in the fruit it bears, in its own season.
And the earth brought out green growth, the seed-bearing plant after its kind, and the fruit tree making fruit, whose seed is in it, after its kind. And God saw that it was good.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.You will know them by their fruits. Do people gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?THE THREAD
And they told him, and said, We came to the land where you sent us, and surely it flows with milk and honey; and this is its fruit.The command to bring fruit becomes tangible here: they carry back the fruit of the land itself. The same Hebrew word, peri, makes the land’s abundance something visible and held in their hands.
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