What Does Psalm 107:26 Mean in the King James?
They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.
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 storm’s vertical swing becomes an inner loss of firmness: the living self itself is what melts.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment when life throws you from one extreme to the other, and your living self loses firmness under distress. “Soul” names the whole living person here, so the line reaches beyond a thought or mood and describes life itself as affected.
THE ROOT
תִּתְמוֹגָג
titmogag
GROWS FROM
מוּג
mug
Melt, dissolve, lose firmness.
“melted” in this verse is titmogag. The same root describes people who faint before terror and the earth melting, so the line makes distress a loss of firmness rather than merely a feeling.
ALSO GROWS
tamug: It melts (Psalm 46:6, of the earth).
תָּמוּג
The same root applies to the ground itself giving way, widening the verse’s inner image to instability in the world around the speaker.
namogu: They melt or faint (Joshua 2:9, of the land’s inhabitants).
נָמֹגוּ
The KJV renders this form “faint”; it shows the same root describing people losing firmness under terror.
נַפְשָׁם
nafsham
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
Be refreshed or take respite; the noun names a living being, life, or person.
Here “soul” is the living person in their full aliveness, rather than only a private inner faculty. The related verb carries a sense of refreshment or respite, making the melting a vivid loss of the self’s steadiness.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living being, person, life, or self.
נֶפֶשׁ
This noun shows the wider sense of “soul” in the verse: the whole living self is affected.
naphash: Be refreshed or take respite (Exodus 31:17).
נָפַשׁ
The related verb names restoration; the verse’s image of melting marks the opposite condition, a life under distress losing firmness.
THE PATTERN
When upheaval carries a person beyond their control, the outer motion can become an inner loss of firmness.
Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance.For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.THE THREAD
And she said unto the men, I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.The word the KJV renders “faint” is another form of the same Hebrew root translated “melted” here. The shared root shows the same inner yielding under terror in a different setting: distress dissolves human firmness.
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