What Does Proverbs 27:18 Mean?
Whoever keeps the fig tree eats its fruit, and whoever keeps his master is weighted.
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
Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that waiteth on his master shall be honoured.THE KEY
The verse’s “waiting” is active attendance: what you tend feeds you, and faithful service is given weight as honor.
THE MEANING
When you tend what is entrusted to you, its fruit becomes your portion. When you remain attentive in service, that attendance carries weight and is honored.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that waiting is empty delay or that faithful service goes unseen: the Hebrew carries active watchfulness, and the verse names honor as its return.
THE ROOT
שֹׁמֵר
shomer
GROWS FROM
שמר
sh-m-r
To guard, keep, or watch over.
“keeps” in this verse is shomer. The word translated “waiteth” carries the sense of active watchfulness and attendance. It places the servant’s steady care alongside the keeper’s care for the fig tree: both remain with what has been entrusted to them.
ALSO GROWS
shamar: To keep, guard, or watch.
שָׁמַר
This is the verb from the same root, making the servant’s attendance a form of keeping watch.
mishmar: A watch, guard, or charge entrusted to someone.
מִשְׁמָר
It shows that keeping watch can be a sustained duty of care, not merely a passing wait.
יְכֻבָּד
yekhubad
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
“weighted” in this verse is yekhubad. The word for being honored grows from the language of weight: to be honored is to count as weighty, to carry substance in another’s regard. The proverb presents attentive service as something recognized and given value.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
This is the root’s basic sense, revealing the concrete image underneath honor.
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This familiar noun shares the root and carries the same movement from weight to recognized honor.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
This verb makes the link explicit: honoring someone is to regard them as having weight.
THE PATTERN
Sustained care and faithful service bear a fitting return: fruit for the keeper and honor for the servant.
A man is filled with good from the fruit of his mouth, and the recompense of a man's hands returns to him.If anyone serves me, let them follow me, and where I am, there my servant will also be. If anyone serves me, my Father will give them weight.While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.THE THREAD
Give the LORD weight with your wealth, and with the first of all your yield.“Honour” here comes from the same כבד (k-b-d) root as “honoured” in Proverbs 27:18: both carry the sense of weight and worth. The firstfruits link that weight to what the land has yielded, echoing the keeper who eats the fig tree’s fruit.
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