the yield that comes in from land or labor: a harvest of crops, or income and gain more broadly
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
The word names what comes in. Its root idea is arrival, so it points to whatever a field, a vineyard, or a season of work finally delivers into a person's hands. In most of its uses that is the harvest itself: the grain, wine, oil, and fruit gathered off the land once the growing is done.
From there the word widens. The same picture of a return coming in covers money and profit, so the book of Proverbs can weigh the gain that wisdom brings against silver and gold, and can call the income of the wicked something that only breeds trouble. Whether the return is a crop or a coin, it is still the yield that arrives.
At its furthest reach the word turns figurative. A person's own words are pictured as a kind of crop, so that people are fed by the produce of their lips: what they say comes back to nourish or to ruin them.
Nuances
1aproduce of the ground: the crops, harvest, or yield of a field, vineyard, or tree
the same word also plainly means the crops off the ground, not only moneyLev 23:39
Both
both name income that comes in to a person or placeIsa 23:3
Only revenue
revenue sounds purely financial or governmental in English, losing the picture of a gathered harvest
“yield”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“gain”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“fruit”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“harvest”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How tevu'ah differs from similar Hebrew words
יְבוּלthe crops the ground itself sends up, viewed as what the soil produces; this word instead stresses what is gathered in to the owner, and reaches on to money and gain.
Reaches past the field into money and gain, naming revenue, income, and profit, so that wisdom's worth or a person's earnings can be called their yield.Pro 3:14Pro 8:19Pro 15:6Ecc 5:10
Frames the crop as harvest gathered in and measured out, the yield you reap, tithe, eat, and store, rather than what is merely growing.Deu 14:22Lev 25:3Gen 47:24
Both
Both name the agricultural increase that field and land produce, the crop that feeds and enriches those who sow it.Psa 85:12Psa 107:37
Names the yield as what the ground itself sends up, the increase that grows out of the soil. It is almost always the thing the land, the earth, or the field yields, tying the word to the act of the ground producing.Lev 26:4Psa 67:6Zec 8:12
Its failure is pictured as the soil holding back, so that when the sky is shut up the land gives no yield at all.Deu 11:17Hag 1:10Hab 3:17
תְּנוּבָהfresh fruit or growth that a plant bears, a poetic word for produce still on the vine or branch; this word points rather to the yield once it comes in, and can also mean income.
Names the yield once it is gathered in and counted out, the harvest measured for tithe, sale, or storage. It is the crop after it has been reaped, ready to be handed over as a share to Pharaoh, tithed, or priced by the number of years left before the jubilee.Gen 47:24Lev 25:15Deu 14:22
Reaches beyond the field into money and gain, naming revenue, income, and profit, so that a trading city's earnings, the worth of wisdom, or a person's takings can all be called their yield.Isa 23:3Pro 8:19Pro 16:8
Both
Both name what the field and the ground bring forth for people to eat, so either word can stand for the increase of the field as ordinary food.Lev 25:12Ezk 36:30
Pictures produce while it is still fresh and growing, the sweet ripe fruit on the tree and the blossom that buds and fills the whole earth. It is the living, thriving growth itself rather than a harvest reckoned up.Jdg 9:11Isa 27:6
Its loss is felt as famine and death, the fresh food of the field wasting away when nothing grows to eat.Lam 4:9
פְּרִיfruit as the single product of a tree or womb, and a very common image for results of any kind; this word is the aggregate yield or income harvested, not one piece of fruit.
The harvest yield gathered in, the total crop a field or land brings forth over a season, central to the laws of the sabbath and jubilee years.Lev 25:3Lev 25:20Exo 23:10
Reckoned as revenue or income measured for tithe and gain, what comes IN as profit, including profit gotten wrongly or with sorrow.Deu 14:22Pro 16:8Pro 15:6
Both
Both name what the ground gives back to those who work it; in the same breath Scripture pairs the yield of the field with the fruit of the trees as the land's increase.Lev 19:25Psa 107:37
The measurable crop a field or vineyard brings in, which the law counts and divides: six years of sowing and gathering, a tenth set aside every year, a third-year tithe stored up, and a field's whole yield forfeited when it is sown with two kinds of seed.Lev 25:3Deu 14:22Deu 14:28Deu 22:9
Becomes a unit of value that can be priced and traded: land is bought and sold by counting how many harvests are left before the year of release, so the number of yields sets the price.Lev 25:15Lev 25:16
Stretches beyond farming to money and profit: it is the trading revenue of a port city, the income a lover of wealth is never satisfied with, and what wisdom pays out, worth more than fine gold or choice silver.Isa 23:3Ecc 5:10Pro 3:14Pro 8:19
Regularly appears as something lost, seized, or shamed: a fire that eats up everything a man has grown, a harvest handed over to foreign kings, and sown wheat that comes up thorns.Job 31:12Neh 9:37Jer 12:13
Both
Both name what the ground gives back, and in one verse they stack: Joseph is blessed with the choicest of the crops the sun ripens, one word rating the quality of what the other word counts.Deu 33:14
Each can present the land's produce as a gift God grants rather than a result the farmer manages, whether as a blessing spoken over a tribe's territory or as rain and rich food promised to a repentant people.Deu 33:13Isa 30:23Lev 25:21
Praises the QUALITY of what is produced rather than the amount: in Moses' blessing on Joseph each item is the very best its source can give, the choicest gifts of the sky above, of the oldest mountains, and of the land and everything in it.Deu 33:13Deu 33:15Deu 33:16
At home in love poetry, where it names the delicacies of a garden: the fine fruits growing among the spices, the choice fruit a lover is invited in to eat, and the pick of new and old kept ready at the door.Sng 4:13Sng 4:16Sng 7:13
Never appears in law, accounting, or a threat of loss: all eight uses sit inside a blessing or a love song, so the word always carries delight and never a ledger or a curse.Deu 33:14Sng 4:16
tevu'ah in the other biblical languages
γέννημαGreek“offspring”the Greek word for what the earth or a plant produces, its yield or offspring; it shares the crop sense but does not carry the money and revenue reach this Hebrew word has.
Names the produce of the ground, the grain, wine, and fruit that a field or vineyard finally delivers once the growing season is done.Lev 25:3Deu 14:22
Widens to income, gain, and revenue, the return a thing yields, so that the profit of wisdom can be weighed against silver and gold.Pro 3:14Pro 8:19
Both
Both rest on the idea of what a source brings forth, the produced or begotten thing that issues from its origin, whether the yield the land puts out or the young a creature bears.Gen 47:24Mat 3:7
Names living offspring, the young that a creature brings forth, and in the New Testament always the offspring of vipers rather than any crop of the ground.Mat 12:34Luk 3:7
Appears only as a stinging rebuke, branding people the brood of vipers to expose the poisonous and hostile stock they are born from.Mat 3:7Mat 23:33
καρπόςGreek“fruit”the broad Greek word for fruit, both literal produce and the metaphorical results of a life; it overlaps the harvest and figurative uses but is not the standard word for income or revenue.
is the measurable income of the land, the yearly return that is counted, tithed, and set aside.Deu 14:22Deu 14:282Ch 31:5
is the harvest reckoned and rationed by the sabbath and jubilee calendar, priced by the number of cropping years left before the land rests.Lev 25:15Lev 25:16Lev 25:20Exo 23:10
is weighed as profit against silver and gold, the gain that wisdom or labor brings in.Pro 3:14Pro 8:19Ecc 5:10
Both
both name the crop that a field or vineyard actually yields, the real produce gathered in from the ground.2Ti 2:61Co 9:7Lev 25:3Jos 5:12
both stretch beyond the field to name the moral or spiritual yield a life brings forth, whether the good it grows or the words it speaks.Gal 5:22Php 1:11Pro 18:20Jer 2:3
is the visible product by which a tree, and by extension a person, is judged: a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bad fruit, so the fruit reveals the source.Mat 7:16Mat 7:17Mat 12:33Luk 6:44
names a person's own children or descendants, spoken of as the fruit of the womb or of the loins.Luk 1:42Act 2:30
is what a branch bears only by staying joined to its vine, or a buried seed by first dying: abundance that comes from remaining in union with its source.Jhn 15:4Jhn 15:5Jhn 15:8Jhn 12:24
What scholars say about tevu'ah
A feminine noun built on the verb בּוֹא (to come or go in), תְּבוּאָה denotes that which comes in, hence produce or yield, and by natural extension income or revenue. The standard critical lexicons (HALOT, BDB, DCH) treat it as a single word whose range runs from the concrete crops of field and vineyard to money, gain, and profit, and finally to a small set of figurative uses such as the fruit of the lips in Proverbs 18:20. It belongs to a group of Hebrew nouns for agricultural output alongside יְבוּל (what the ground yields) and תְּנוּבָה (fresh produce), but is set apart by its accent on what is gathered in to the owner rather than on the growing itself. The sense of the word is not in dispute.
Sources
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. תבואהlexicon
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. תבואהlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. תבואהlexicon
Elmer A. Martens, "בּוֹא," in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), entry 212dictionary