What Does Psalm 106:30 Mean in the King James?

Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed.

Psalm 106:30 · 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 Hebrew verb behind “executed judgment” shares its root with prayer: Phinehas enters the breach, and the plague is restrained.

THE MEANING

You meet a stark sequence: Phinehas stands and intervenes, and the plague is restrained. The scene’s intervention is violent; the verse names judgment and places the plague’s stopping after his act.

THE ROOT

וַיְפַלֵּל

vayefallel

GROWS FROM

פלל

palal

To intervene or intercede; the root also carries the sense of judging.

The same root produces words for prayer and intercession, so “executed judgment” holds an additional sense of entering a crisis on someone’s behalf. That connection illuminates the intervention, but does not make its violence disappear.

ALSO GROWS

tefillah: Prayer

תְּפִלָּה

This related word shows the root’s connection to addressing a crisis through prayer.

hitpallel: To pray or intercede

הִתְפַּלֵּל

This verb makes explicit the intercessory sense carried by the root behind Phinehas’s act.

THE PATTERN

Intercession enters a crisis and changes the conditions carrying harm.

So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children.

Genesis 20:17 · KJVThe same root for prayer appears as Abraham intercedes, and healing follows.

And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Exodus 32:14 · KJVAfter Moses pleads for the people, the threatened destruction is withdrawn.

Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.

James 5:17 · KJVElijah’s prayer changes the course of rain, showing intercession affecting a condition that bears on life.

THE THREAD

So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children.

Genesis 20:17 · KJV

Genesis uses the same ⁨פלל⁩ (palal) root plainly for Abraham’s prayer; Psalm 106 uses it in the phrase rendered “executed judgment.” That shared root lets you hear intercession within Phinehas’s intervention, while the surrounding violence remains part of the scene.

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