What Does Psalm 107:37 Mean?
They sow fields and plant vineyards, and make the fruit of the yield.
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 sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase.THE KEY
“Sow” shares its Hebrew root with “seed” and “offspring,” so the act of planting already carries the language of what will grow from it.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you a picture of abundance taking shape: fields are sown, vineyards planted, and fruit arrives as a yield. Increase here has roots; it is what comes in from what has been planted.
THE ROOT
וַיִּזְרְעוּ
vayyizreʿu
GROWS FROM
זרע
zāraʿ
To sow or seed.
The verb “sow” and the noun for “seed” and “offspring” share the root זרע (zāraʿ), joining planting with generation. What goes into the ground carries the language of what may follow.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow or plant seed.
זָרַע
This is the action named in the verse: placing seed into a field.
zeraʿ: Seed; offspring or descendants.
זֶרַע
The same root links what is planted with the generations that come from it.
וַיִּטְּעוּ
vayyitʿu
GROWS FROM
נטע
nāṭaʿ
To plant or set into the ground.
“plant” in this verse is vayyitʿu. The verse pairs scattering seed with setting vines into the soil. This root carries the sense of something given a place to take hold, so the vineyard’s fruit comes from what is rooted.
ALSO GROWS
nēṭaʿ: A plant or shoot.
נֶטַע
A planted vine begins as living growth that can mature into fruit.
maṭṭāʿ: A planting or plantation.
מַטָּע
The vineyard is not a single plant but a cultivated planting with the capacity for yield.
תְּבוּאָה
tevuʾah
GROWS FROM
בוא
bôʾ
To come or enter.
“the yield” in this verse is tevuʾah. תְּבוּאָה (tevuʾah), the produce or harvest, comes from בוא (bôʾ), “to come in.” The increase is pictured as gathered yield that arrives, paired with fruit rather than left as an abstract quantity.
ALSO GROWS
bôʾ: To come or enter.
בּוֹא
It gives the root sense behind produce described as something that comes in.
māḇôʾ: An entrance or coming in.
מָבוֹא
This related form echoes the movement from planted growth to gathered yield.
THE PATTERN
Abundance takes form as what is sown and rooted matures into a yield.
Then Isaac sowed in that land, and in that same year found a hundredfold, and the LORD blessed him.Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.Truly, truly, I say to you. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.THE THREAD
Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.“Sow” in both verses is זָרַע (zāraʿ), the Hebrew root meaning “to sow,” also carried by the word for seed and offspring. Psalm 126 follows that seed from planting to harvest, opening the increase here as growth that unfolds over time.
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