The statement love you, bless you, and multiply you is fairly simple and easy to understand. To bless is to cause good things to happen, to bestow benefits on, or “cause you to prosper”; multiply means to cause to increase in number.

The fruit of your body: here body represents the ability to have children, and fruit means offspring or children. Multiply you and bless the fruit of your body have the same meaning, so we may combine the two clauses and say, for example, “He will cause you to prosper by giving you many children.”

The fruit of your ground: this is a promise of abundant crops, as follows: grain (wheat and barley), wine (grapevines, vineyards), oil (olive trees, the oil being derived from olives). Wine is a fermented drink made from grapes (see also 6.1 for wine and “olives”).

Your cattle and the young of your flock: in this context cattle refers to bulls and cows, and flock to goats and sheep. See similar lists in 11.14; 12.17; 14.23. In some languages this sentence will be expressed something like “Your herds of animals named ‘cow’ will have many babies [offspring]. So also will your animals named ‘sheep’ and ‘goat.’ ”

For in the land which he swore …, see 1.8.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .