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Bible Dictionaries
Fruit
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or A. Noun.
Perı̂y (פְּרִי, Strong's #6529), “fruit; reward; price; earnings; product; result.” Cognates of this word appear in Ugaritic and Egyptian. Perı̂y appears about 120 times in biblical Hebrew and in every period.
First, perı̂y represents the mature edible product of a plant, which is its “fruit.” This broad meaning is evident in Deut. 7:13: “He will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine and the flocks of thy sheep.…” In its first biblical appearance, the word is used to signify both “trees” and the “fruit” of trees: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind …” (Gen. 1:11). In Ps. 107:34, the word is used as a modifier of land. The resulting term is “a fruitful land” in the sense of a “land of fruit.”
Second, perı̂y means “offspring,” or the “fruit of a womb.” In Deut. 7:13, the word represents “human offspring,” but it can also be used of animal “offspring” (Gen. 1:22).
Third, the “product” or “result” of an action is, in poetry, sometimes called its “fruit”: “A man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth” (Ps. 58:11). Isa. 27:9 speaks of “the full price of the pardoning of his sin” (KJV, “all the fruit to take away his sin”), i.e., the result of God’s purifying acts toward Israel. The wise woman buys and plants a field with her earnings or the “fruit of her hands” (Prov. 31:16). In other words, she is to be rewarded by receiving the “product” of her hands (Prov. 31:31). The righteous will be rewarded “according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds” (Jer. 17:10, NASB; cf. 21:14). In most passages similar to these, the NASB renders perı̂y “fruit” (cf. Prov. 18:21).
B. Verb.
Pârad (פָּרַד, Strong's #6504), “to be fruitful, bear fruit.” This verb appears 29 times in the Old Testament. Its first occurrence is in Gen. 1:22: “And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, …”
These files are public domain.
Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Fruit'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/f/fruit.html. 1940.
