Bible Strands
Psalms 127:3
Children are indeed a heritage from the LORD, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — A believer addresses the assembly in a Song of Ascents, immediately after the warning in v.2 that human toil for bread is vain. The pivot is corrective: what God actually gives is not bread earned but children granted.
The words — נַחֲלָה (nachalah) is a legal term for a father's allotted portion; שׂכַר (sakar) is wages paid for labor. Both frame children as something received, not produced.
The thread — Deuteronomy 28:4 uses the same "fruit of the womb" language within covenant blessing; 1 Samuel 1:27 records Hannah's gratitude for a child as a divine grant; Psalms 128:3 continues the household-blessing theme in the very next psalm.
Why it lands — The verse reorients the reader from production to reception. It asks the reader to stop treating children as a project of effort and start treating them as a gift received from God.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Cross-references
- Psalms 128:3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine flourishing within your house, your sons like olive shoots sitting around your table.
- Deuteronomy 28:4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
- 1 Samuel 1:27 I prayed for this boy, and since the LORD has granted me what I asked of Him,
- Genesis 48:4 and told me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you; I will make you a multitude of peoples, and will give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.’
- Genesis 33:5 When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he asked, “Who are these with you?” Jacob answered, “These are the children God has graciously given your servant.”
- Isaiah 8:18 Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me as signs and symbols in Israel from the LORD of Hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.
- Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.”
- 1 Samuel 1:19 The next morning they got up early to bow in worship before the LORD, and then they returned home to Ramah. And Elkanah had relations with his wife Hannah, and the LORD remembered her.
- Joshua 24:3 But I took your father Abraham from beyond the Euphrates and led him through all the land of Canaan, and I multiplied his descendants. I gave him Isaac,
- Genesis 24:60 And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, “Our sister, may you become the mother of thousands upon thousands. May your offspring possess the gates of their enemies.”