To sprout or grow describes growth beginning or being brought forth, with the passage naming what grows and who supplies it. Genesis says the Lord God gives growth to trees pleasing to the eye and good for food.
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Full entry for צָמַח (H6779) · Open the biblical lexicon
To sprout or grow describes growth beginning or being brought forth, with the passage naming what grows and who supplies it. Genesis says the Lord God gives growth to trees pleasing to the eye and good for food.
The BSB source-word alignment has 33 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include sprouted (3), grow (2), have grown back (2), to grow (2), to spring up (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 2:5. Its strongest book concentrations include Isaiah (8), Genesis (5), Psalms (4), Ezekiel (3).
To sprout or grow describes growth beginning or being brought forth, with the passage naming what grows and who supplies it. Genesis says the Lord God gives growth to trees pleasing to the eye and good for food. Psalm 104 praises Him for growing grass for livestock and crops that people cultivate. Isaiah compares the earth and garden bringing forth growth with the Lord causing righteousness and praise to spring up before the nations.
The physical process and the expressly stated comparison must remain distinguishable. Sprouting is not by itself a certificate of moral goodness, since Genesis also names thorns and thistles growing from the cursed ground. Attend to the named product, agent and purpose, honoring provision and the Lord's promise without treating every expanding activity as righteous or claiming a fixed personal timetable from a growth image.
God-given trees, food-producing grass and crops, and Isaiah's explicit righteousness-and-praise comparison give sprouting different stated roles. Thorns also grow, so the product and context rather than growth alone establish its assessment.
Out of the ground the Lord God gave growth to every tree that is pleasing to the eye and good for food. And in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Lord God gives trees growth from the ground, and the account specifies their pleasing appearance and food use while separately naming the two trees in the garden's middle.
He makes the grass grow for the livestock and provides crops for man to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth:
Grass for livestock and crops for cultivation are named as provision the Lord brings forth, with the next verse specifying food and drink rather than an unlimited personal harvest promise.
For as the earth brings forth its growth, and as a garden enables seed to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
The earth and garden's growth provides the explicitly stated comparison for the Lord causing righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations; the Lord remains the named agent.
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. Organic growth from the ground up—literal vegetation or figurative flourishing of people, dynasties, messianic promise.
Organic growth from the ground up—literal vegetation or figurative flourishing of people, dynasties, messianic promise.
to sprout (transitive or intransitive, literal or figurative) BDB: sprout Usage: bear, bring forth, (cause to, make to) bud (forth), (cause to, make to) grow (again, up), (cause to) spring (forth, up).
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 33 lexical occurrence verses.
צָמַח is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Isaiah begins its comparison with a familiar process: earth produces growth and a garden lets seed spring up. The passage then explicitly names the Lord as the one who will cause righteousness and praise to arise before the nations. That movement must not be replaced by a general command that people manufacture the promised result through enough effort. Genesis and the psalm also retain the Lord as giver of growth, while actual trees, grass, livestock and cultivation make His provision concrete.
Yet sprouting itself is not an automatic moral assessment; Genesis' thorns and thistles also grow within the stated consequence upon the ground. A teacher should therefore attend to agent, product and purpose instead of praising every expansion. The growth image can support confidence in the Lord's named promise without supplying a personalized harvest guarantee or explaining away the needs of people whose fields or circumstances remain difficult.
Isa.61.11
The licensed Hebrew verb includes sprouting or causing growth in literal and figurative applications. The sentence supplies trees, grass, thorns or an explicit comparison of righteousness and praise. Its related English growth vocabulary does not merge it with the separate blossom family, and grammatical agency must not become a new canonical sense.
Mark 4:26-29 describes seed sprouting and growing in a stated kingdom comparison, while the sower does not fully explain the process. This Greek account can be studied beside Isaiah's named growth comparison without assigning identical lexical identity, treating every product as righteous or promising one fixed rate of growth for every person or community.