produce: what the ground itself hands over, the crops a land yields, and in one place the goods a household has piled up.
Almost every time this word appears, it sits in the same sentence pattern: the land gives its yield. That is worth noticing, because it means the word does not look at the harvest from the farmer's side, as something gathered and stored. It looks at the ground's side, at what the soil sends up and hands over. Twelve of its thirteen appearances have a land, a field, or a vine as the one doing the giving, or the one refusing to give.
That single pattern turns the word into a kind of gauge of Israel's standing with God:
- When God is honored, the land gives its yield (Leviticus 26:4, Psalm 67:6, Zechariah 8:12).
- When Israel turns away, the very same land withholds it (Leviticus 26:20, Deuteronomy 11:17, Haggai 1:10).
- When an enemy or a swarm of locusts arrives, the yield is wrecked before anyone can eat it (Judges 6:4, Psalm 78:46).
The word also travels in pairs. It is set beside fruit (פְּרִי) so that the ground's yield and the trees' fruit are counted as two separate gifts (Leviticus 26:4, Ezekiel 34:27, Zechariah 8:12). A different word (תְּבוּאָה) covers the same harvest once it has been gathered in and counted as someone's income.
Job 20:28 is the lone exception, and there the word is used of a household rather than a field: what the ruthless man's house has built up is carried off on the day of God's anger. Even in that verse the underlying idea holds, since the word names not what a person owns but what something has produced and now gives up.