To dock off , i.e. curtail (transitive or intransitive, literal or figurative); especially to harvest (grass or grain)
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through theConnect page. Screenshots are helpful.
Qatsar is a Hebrew verb used for reaping a crop and for being short, shortened, constrained, or impatient. The agricultural sense can describe ordinary harvest, covenant care for poor and immigrant neighbors, or a moral harvest used as an image for consequences.
Reader summary
Full entry for קָצַר (H7114) · Open the biblical lexicon
Qatsar is a Hebrew verb used for reaping a crop and for being short, shortened, constrained, or impatient. The agricultural sense can describe ordinary harvest, covenant care for poor and immigrant neighbors, or a moral harvest used as an image for consequences.
The BSB source-word alignment has 49 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the harvesters (4), . . . (3), reap (3), to reap (3), too short (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Leviticus 19:9. Its strongest book concentrations include Leviticus (7), Ruth (7), Isaiah (6), Psalms (4).
Qatsar is a Hebrew verb used for reaping a crop and for being short, shortened, constrained, or impatient. The agricultural sense can describe ordinary harvest, covenant care for poor and immigrant neighbors, or a moral harvest used as an image for consequences. The shortness sense appears when a bed is too short, days are cut short, patience fails, or a rhetorical question denies that the Lord's arm is too short to save.
These uses should not be collapsed into a single hidden metaphor. Leviticus 19 limits a landowner's harvesting so gleaners may receive provision. Hosea 10 and Proverbs 22 use sowing and reaping morally, but they do not promise a mechanical return for every deed within this life. Isaiah 59 rejects any weakness in God's saving power and instead confronts human sin.
Responsible teaching honors laborers, practices generosity, recognizes consequences, and refuses to blame sufferers by treating every hardship as a harvest they personally planted.
Qatsar ranges from literal reaping to figurative harvest and shortness, with each context deciding whether the verb concerns labor, consequence, limitation, or impatience.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Israel's harvest practice is deliberately limited so productive land includes space for poor and immigrant neighbors to gather food.
Sow for yourselves righteousness and reap the fruit of loving devotion; break up your unplowed ground. For it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and sends righteousness upon you like rain.
Hosea turns farming into a repentance image that joins righteous action, covenant devotion, seeking the Lord, and His gracious provision.
He who sows injustice will reap disaster, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.
Wisdom presents injustice as seed that bears destructive fruit, while the proverb's form warns rather than supplying a timetable for every outcome.
Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear.
The prophet denies that divine inability explains the crisis; the following verses locate the breach in the people's wrongdoing.
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. to dock off , i.e. curtail (transitive or intransitive, literal or figurative); especially to harvest (grass or grain)
to dock off, i.e. curtail (transitive or intransitive, literal or figurative); especially to harvest (grass or grain) BDB: be short Usage: × at all, cut down, much discouraged, grieve, harvestman, lothe, mourn, reap(-er), (be, wax) short(-en, -er), straiten, trouble, vex.
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.
קָצַר 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.
Harvest language joins labor, restraint, provision, and consequence. Leviticus does not permit an owner to maximize extraction from every edge; the harvest itself becomes a place where covenant mercy leaves room for neighbors in need. Hosea calls a wayward people to break hard ground, sow righteousness, seek the Lord, and receive what only He can send. Proverbs warns that injustice produces ruin, yet wisdom sayings must not be weaponized against every sufferer as if pain proved personal wrongdoing.
Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root in a different sense: God's arm is not too short to save. The problem is neither divine weakness nor deafness but sin that disrupts fellowship and justice. Churches can honor growers and workers, share the fruit of labor, repent of exploitative systems, and trust God's saving ability. They should also resist frantic productivity, contempt for rest, and spiritual blame that ignores lament, oppression, mystery, and grace.
Lev.19.9
The verb carries both a common agricultural sense, to reap, and a shortness sense, to be short or curtailed. Context, syntax, and genre must decide the meaning rather than an assumed metaphorical link.
Jesus and the apostles use harvest imagery for mission, judgment, generosity, and moral consequence, but those Greek expressions are not automatic lexical equivalents of H7114. Galatians 6 especially preserves patience and doing good while excluding a simplistic guarantee of immediate earthly return.