A vine (as twining ), especially the grape
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The Hebrew noun gefen names a vine, especially a grapevine. Scripture uses the plant as food-producing agriculture, an image of settled security, and a figure for a people whose fruit reveals how they have responded to God.
Reader summary
Full entry for גֶּפֶן (H1612) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun gefen names a vine, especially a grapevine. Scripture uses the plant as food-producing agriculture, an image of settled security, and a figure for a people whose fruit reveals how they have responded to God.
The BSB source-word alignment has 55 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include vine (8), vines (5), the vine (4), from the vine (3), of the vine (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 40:9. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (7), Isaiah (7), Jeremiah (5), Psalms (5).
The Hebrew noun gefen names a vine, especially a grapevine. Scripture uses the plant as food-producing agriculture, an image of settled security, and a figure for a people whose fruit reveals how they have responded to God. Deuteronomy includes vines among the good land's crops and immediately warns Israel not to forget the Lord when abundance comes. Under Solomon, sitting beneath one's own vine describes ordinary security, though the wider account also records royal wealth, tribute, and labor.
Psalms and Hosea portray Israel as a vine, but one text laments a ravaged planting while another exposes fruit redirected toward idolatry. Habakkuk names failed vines as part of severe food loss and still waits upon God without pretending that hunger is easy. Song of Songs places the budding vine within mutual, intimate invitation. The noun itself does not promise prosperity, prove spiritual fruitfulness, identify a modern nation as biblical Israel, or authorize control of land or bodies.
Faithful teaching lets each passage determine whether the vine is literal, poetic, national, agricultural, relational, or judicial.
Gefen gives Scripture a living image whose fruit can signify provision, security, love, covenant vocation, failure, or loss. The passage, not the plant alone, determines which movement is present.
A land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey;
Vines belong to the land's concrete agricultural abundance, while the chapter warns satisfied Israel against pride, forgetfulness, and claims of self-made wealth.
Throughout the days of Solomon, Judah and Israel dwelt securely from Dan to Beersheba, each man under his own vine and his own fig tree.
Each household beneath its vine and fig tree pictures settled security during Solomon's reign, within an account that also names tribute, royal consumption, and military capacity.
You uprooted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and transplanted it.
The psalm identifies Israel as a vine transplanted from Egypt and develops the image into lament, exposure, destruction, and a plea for restored divine attention.
Israel was a luxuriant vine, yielding fruit for himself. The more his fruit increased, the more he increased the altars. The better his land produced, the better he made the sacred pillars.
Israel's luxuriant vine bears fruit for self-serving worship, so visible productivity cannot be treated as evidence of covenant faithfulness or divine approval.
Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls,
The prophet names fruitless vines within comprehensive agricultural collapse and then confesses trust while honestly trembling before the approaching distress.
Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vine has budded, if the blossom has opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom—there I will give you my love.
The budding vine supplies fragrance and season within a beloved's mutual invitation, keeping agricultural imagery joined to personal desire and relational agency.
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. Israel's covenant symbol of divine blessing and fruitfulness; twining growth emphasizes organic flourishing under God's care
Israel's covenant symbol of divine blessing and fruitfulness; twining growth emphasizes organic flourishing under God's care
a vine (as twining), especially the grape BDB: vine Usage: vine, tree.
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 1 selected witness from 55 lexical occurrence verses.
Symbol of covenant blessing misused.Hosea 10:1-8
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Gefen is fruitful precisely because Scripture does not make the vine carry one fixed meaning. In Deuteronomy the grapevine belongs to a land whose abundance should produce grateful remembrance rather than pride. First Kings uses household vines to portray security, yet its royal setting prevents a sentimental reading that ignores how Solomon's system was sustained.
Psalm 80 turns Israel's history into a transplanted vine now breached and ravaged, allowing wounded people to pray for God to attend and restore. Hosea uses a luxuriant vine to expose fruit devoted to false worship, warning that growth and religious activity can coexist with covenant betrayal. Habakkuk names the vine's failure as material deprivation and refuses to deny distress even as he rejoices in God.
Song of Songs lets the vine accompany desire and invitation between lovers. Teaching should therefore honor food, labor, land, grief, worship, and embodied love in their proper settings. The vine can invite gratitude and truthful fruit, but it cannot by itself promise wealth, transfer territory, measure another person's faith, or override relational agency.
Ps.80.8
Gefen is a Hebrew noun for vine, normally the grapevine. Literal agricultural references and figurative portrayals share the plant image, but grammar alone does not decide whether a verse concerns crops, a household, Israel, judgment, or intimate poetry.
Jesus' vineyard and vine sayings use Greek vocabulary and must be interpreted in their own settings. John 15 develops union with Christ and fruit-bearing, while the Synoptic vineyard parables address stewardship and judgment. Those passages can illuminate a canonical pattern of cultivation and fruit without turning every H1612 vine into a direct prediction of Christ or the church.