A garden or vineyard
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H3754 names a vineyard, a cultivated plot of vines whose fruit depends on land, labor, seasons, and patient care. Vineyards can represent gift, livelihood, inheritance, stewardship, exploitation, or judgment according to their setting.
Reader summary
Full entry for כֶּרֶם (H3754) · Open the biblical lexicon
H3754 names a vineyard, a cultivated plot of vines whose fruit depends on land, labor, seasons, and patient care. Vineyards can represent gift, livelihood, inheritance, stewardship, exploitation, or judgment according to their setting.
The BSB source-word alignment has 92 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include vineyards (15), and vineyards (9), a vineyard (8), the vineyards (6), the vineyard (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 9:20. Its strongest book concentrations include Isaiah (14), 1 Kings (10), Song Of Solomon (9), Deuteronomy (8).
H3754 names a vineyard, a cultivated plot of vines whose fruit depends on land, labor, seasons, and patient care. Vineyards can represent gift, livelihood, inheritance, stewardship, exploitation, or judgment according to their setting. In Deut. 6. 11, Israel receives vineyards it did not plant and is warned not to forget the Lord when satisfied. In Lev. 19. 10, owners must not strip a vineyard bare but leave fallen grapes for the poor and foreigner, joining cultivation to covenant generosity.
In 1Kgs. 21. 1, Naboth's vineyard becomes the focus of royal coveting that leads to false accusation, murder, and seizure. H3754 opens teaching on gratitude, provision for vulnerable neighbors, and limits on power. It does not promise every faithful person property or abundance, justify taking another's inheritance for a supposedly better use, or make all vineyard imagery interchangeable.
The actual owner, labor, covenant command, and literary role must govern application.
H3754 appears in household agriculture, royal administration, inheritance disputes, gleaning laws, covenant blessings and curses, prophetic metaphors, and restoration hopes. Its cultivated fruitfulness makes it a rich image, but many occurrences simply identify real land and livelihood.
With houses full of every good thing with which you did not fill them, with wells that you did not dig, and with vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you eat and are satisfied,
Israel will enjoy filled houses, dug wells, vineyards, and groves it did not produce, and must guard against forgetting the Lord in satisfaction.
You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.
The Lord commands landholders not to strip their vineyards or collect fallen grapes, leaving provision for the poor and the foreigner.
Some time after these events, Naboth the Jezreelite owned a vineyard in Jezreel next to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria.
Naboth owns an ancestral vineyard beside Ahab's palace, setting the scene for the king's coveting and Jezebel's murderous abuse of authority.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Vineyard as productive land holding; embodies covenant blessing, fertility, and righteous labor in OT theology
Vineyard as productive land holding; embodies covenant blessing, fertility, and righteous labor in OT theology
a garden or vineyard BDB: vineyard Usage: vines, (increase of the) vineyard(-s), vintage. See also 1021.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 92 lexical occurrence verses.
כֶּרֶם is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
The metaphor underscores divine ownership and the leaders’ responsibility to nurture rather than exploit God’s people.Isaiah 3:13-15
The vineyard symbolizes God’s covenant people and underscores his personal investment and rightful expectation of fruit.Isaiah 5:1-7
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H3754 joins fruitfulness to memory, justice, and restraint. Deuteronomy anticipates Israel enjoying vineyards planted by others, but abundance creates a spiritual danger: satisfaction can conceal dependence and produce forgetfulness of the Lord. Leviticus limits an owner's harvesting rights so that the poor and foreigner can gather food with dignity. Naboth's vineyard then exposes what happens when royal desire ignores covenant boundaries.
Ahab sees convenient land, while Naboth understands an inherited trust; Jezebel uses institutions and false testimony to transfer the property through death. The vineyard is therefore neither a simple badge of blessing nor a symbol detached from people. It represents work, livelihood, family continuity, communal provision, and the temptation of power. Faithful teaching gives thanks for cultivated gifts, protects room for the vulnerable, and refuses to baptize coveting as development or ministry vision.
Christ's vineyard teachings can extend the canonical theme of entrusted fruitfulness, but they do not erase these concrete commands about land, neighbor, truth, and authority.
1Kgs.21.1
H3754 is a Hebrew noun for a vineyard or cultivated vine plot. Possessors, planting and harvest verbs, inheritance language, and metaphorical markers clarify whether the reference is ordinary agriculture, property, or figurative covenant speech.
Jesus' parables and sayings frequently use vineyards as settings for labor, entrusted responsibility, grace, rejection, and judgment. Those teachings draw on Israel's agricultural and prophetic world, while the concrete justice of gleaning and Naboth's inheritance continues to guard application.