What Does Psalm 106:29 Mean in the King James?
Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them.
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
What the KJV calls their “inventions” is their deeds, and the verse pictures the plague as a blow breaking in among the community.
THE MEANING
What you enact with others does not stay private; a community can bear consequences together. The verse speaks with full severity: deeds provoke God, and a plague breaks in among the people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
That harmful acts remain private and their consequences fall only on the people who commit them.
THE ROOT
מַעֲלָלֵיהֶם
ma'alaleihem
GROWS FROM
עלל
ʿ-l-l
act, do
“their inventions” in this verse is ma'alaleihem. “Inventions” can suggest ideas or devices today, but מַעֲלָלֵיהֶם means their deeds. The verse ties what happens among the people to what they actually do.
ALSO GROWS
ma'alal: deed, action
מַעֲלָל
This is the singular form behind “their deeds,” placing the verse’s emphasis on what is enacted.
alilah: deed, action
עֲלִילָה
This related word keeps the root’s focus on conduct and actions.
מַגֵּפָה
maggephah
GROWS FROM
נגף
n-g-p
strike, smite
The root places the image of a blow inside the word translated “plague,” so the calamity is pictured as striking, not as a neutral condition. Paired with “brake in,” the verse makes the outbreak feel like an impact entering the community.
ALSO GROWS
nagaph: strike, smite
נָגַף
The verb carries the striking force that remains within the word “plague.”
negef: blow, plague
נֶגֶף
This related noun echoes the passage’s image of calamity as a striking blow.
וַתִּפְרָץ
vatiphrats
GROWS FROM
פרץ
p-r-ts
break through, burst out
The Hebrew verb belongs to a root meaning to break through. The KJV’s “brake in” carries that physical force, and the root connects the outbreak to the image of a breach into the group.
ALSO GROWS
perets: breach, break
פֶּרֶץ
A breach is an opening made by breaking through, echoing how the plague enters among them.
paruts: breached, broken open
פָּרוּץ
This related form reinforces the image of something no longer contained.
THE PATTERN
What a community enacts can return as a consequence the whole community bears.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.THE THREAD
And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel.Numbers uses the same Hebrew noun מַגֵּפָה (maggephah, “plague”) as Psalm 106:29. Here the plague is stayed after a spear thrust kills a man and a woman; the text places that violence beside the stopping of the outbreak.
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