Your strength will be consumed uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your strength will be spent in vain; for your land won’t yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruit.
- KJV And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
- BSB and your strength will be spent in vain. For your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit.
- NKJV And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.
- NLT All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your trees will bear no fruit.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Israel's labor would be wasted as land and trees yield nothing. Without God's blessing, even hard work proves fruitless.
Overview
This continues the curse of barrenness: strength spent in vain because the land withholds its produce. It directly reverses the earlier promise of full harvests. The lesson endures—apart from God's blessing all human effort is empty (Psalm 127:1)—and points to our need for the fruitfulness that comes only through abiding in Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Deut 11:17and Yahweh’s anger be kindled against you, and he shut up the sky, so that there is no rain, and the land doesn’t yield its fruit; and you perish quickly from off the good land which Yahweh gives you.
- Ps 127:1A Song of Ascents. By Solomon. Unless Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless Yahweh watches over the city, the watchman guards it in vain.
- Isa 49:4But I said, “I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength in vain for nothing; yet surely the justice due to me is with Yahweh, and my reward with my God.”
- Lev 26:4then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
- Hab 2:13Behold, isn’t it of Yahweh of Armies that the peoples labor for the fire, and the nations weary themselves for vanity?
- Isa 17:11In the day of your planting, you hedge it in. In the morning, you make your seed blossom, but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
- Deut 28:38–40You will carry much seed out into the field, and will gather little in; for the locust will consume it.
- Job 31:40let briers grow instead of wheat, and stinkweed instead of barley.” The words of Job are ended.
- Hag 1:9–11“You looked for much, and, behold, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says Yahweh of Armies, “Because of my house that lies waste, while each of you is busy with his own house.
- Hag 2:16Through all that time, when one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty, there were only twenty.
- Deut 28:18The fruit of your body, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your livestock, and the young of your flock will be cursed.
- Gal 4:11I am afraid for you, that I might have wasted my labor for you.
- 1 Cor 3:6I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase.
- Ps 107:34and a fruitful land into a salt waste, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it.
- Deut 28:42Locusts will consume all of your trees and the fruit of your ground.
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Christ at the center
Every sacrifice, every priest, and every day of atonement points beyond itself to the one perfect offering and the great High Priest who, by his own blood, makes the unclean holy once for all.
How Leviticus 26:20 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.