What Does Psalm 105:44 Mean in the King James?

And gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the labour of the people;

Psalm 105:44 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

THE KEY

The word “inherit” carries both possession and dispossession, and what passes into the inheritors’ hands is the peoples’ own labor.

THE MEANING

The verse names inheritance as a material transfer: lands belonging to nations are given, and their toil passes into another people’s possession. What is received as a gift by the inheritors is also a loss of land and work for those who labored there.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

This undoes the belief that inheritance is automatically costless: here, the verse names other peoples’ land and labor as what the heirs receive.

THE ROOT

יִירָשׁוּ

yirashu

GROWS FROM

ירשׁ

y-r-sh

To possess, take possession of, or inherit; in the causative stem, to dispossess or drive out.

The verb rendered “inherited” belongs to a root that can also describe dispossessing others. The same root holds the receiving and the removal together, and here what changes hands includes the peoples’ own labor.

ALSO GROWS

yerushah: Inheritance, possession, or property received.

יְרוּשָּׁה

This branch shows inheritance as possession itself, which sharpens the verse’s account of what the new owners receive.

horish: To dispossess, drive out, or give possession to another.

הוֹרִישׁ

This causative branch makes visible the displacement that can accompany the act of possessing.

עֲמַל

ʿamal

GROWS FROM

עמל

ʿ-m-l

Toil, exertion, or wearisome labor.

“labour” in this verse is ʿamal. This word names exertion, not an abstract store of wealth. The verse makes the work itself, the toil expended by peoples, part of what passes to the inheritors.

ALSO GROWS

ʿāmāl: Toil, trouble, or labor.

עָמָל

As a noun, it names the exertion the verse identifies as part of the inheritance.

ʿāmal: To labor or toil.

עָמַל

The verb brings the labor back to the people who expend themselves in the work.

THE PATTERN

Inheritance can transfer land and the fruits of labor from those who worked them to those who receive them.

And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

Exodus 12:36 · KJVThe verse names goods passing from one people to another, ending with the Egyptians’ possessions taken by the departing people.

And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat.

Joshua 24:13 · KJVThe land, cities, vineyards, and food received are explicitly the work of others.

I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.

John 4:38 · KJVThe verse states the pattern plainly: one group enters into the results of another group’s work.

THE THREAD

Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.

Deuteronomy 1:8 · KJV

“Possess” here comes from the same root as “inherited” in Psalm 105:44. That root can name receiving land and, in its causative form, dispossessing others; the psalm makes the transfer sharper by naming the peoples’ labor alongside the land.

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