Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 4:35
White already to harvest. The colour word points at ripeness, and the verb is a command to look.
John 4:35, in every translation this tool compares.
Golden. English picked a different colour for the same idea. Colour words for ripeness are cultural and rarely transfer.
Because white is not an obvious colour for a ripe field to an English reader, and the imperative in the sentence is doing work that the King James preserves and modern versions soften.
The King James reads white already to harvest. Modern versions read ripe for harvest or white for harvest.
λευκός leukos · G3022
Leukos is white or bright. Applied to grain it indicates ripeness, since barley and wheat pale as they dry. Theasasthe is an aorist imperative, a command to look now.
English harvest imagery runs on gold rather than white, so the literal colour reads as odd and most versions substitute ripe.
Colour terms rarely map between languages. When a colour seems wrong, ask what the colour was being used to indicate.
Most modern versions print ripe for harvest; white, the more literal option, is the King James choice.
- leukos of clothing: Matthew 17:2; Revelation 3:4
- The aorist imperative theasasthe
- Compare the harvest imagery at Matthew 9:37
