SIL Translator’s Notes on Proverbs 3:9

3:9

Notice the parallel parts that are similar in meaning:

9a Honor the LORD with your wealth

9b and with the firstfruits of all your harvest ;

3:9a–b

Honor the LORD with…with: In both lines of this verse, the Hebrew word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as with is literally “from/out-of.” This command indicates that a person should honor/respect the LORD by giving or offering to him a part of his wealth and a part of the firstfruits. Another way to translate these two lines is:

Honor the Lord by giving him your money and the first part of all your crops. (Contemporary English Version)

your wealth…the firstfruits of all your harvest: The Good News Translation interprets wealth to be equivalent to firstfruits. It has: “Honor the Lord by making him an offering from the best of all that your land produces.” However, the Hebrew word hon that the Berean Standard Bible translates as wealth is used in Ezekiel of valuable metals and other merchandise. It probably does not refer to land, crops, and animals. Some other ways to translate this word are:

money (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
goods (New Jerusalem Bible)

The term firstfruits refers to the first and best portion that a person harvested from an agricultural crop (see Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deuteronomy 26:1–11.). So the whole verse refers to a person giving offerings from whatever kinds of things he owns and grows.

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Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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