What Does Psalm 107:33 Mean in the King James?
He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground;
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 “dry ground” is a place of thirst, so the verse pictures the very sources of water becoming lack.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now of how the channels that sustain life can become wasteland and thirst. God is the acting subject: even the sources of life can be changed into desolation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the sources sustaining life are beyond God’s power to change.
THE ROOT
צִמָּאוֹן
tzimmaon
GROWS FROM
צמא
to thirst
The word translated “dry ground” means a place of thirst or drought, from צמא (tsama), “to thirst.” The image is more than bare terrain: the land itself is rendered as thirst.
ALSO GROWS
tsame: thirsty
צָמֵא
The same root describes the condition of thirst that characterizes the ground.
tsama: to thirst
צָמָא
This verbal form makes thirst an active condition, not merely an absence of water.
tzimmaon: thirsty place; drought
צִמָּאוֹן
This is the word used for the ground in the verse, making the landscape itself embody thirst.
מֹצָאֵי מַיִם
motsa’ei mayim
GROWS FROM
יצא
to go out, emerge
“watersprings” in this verse is motsa’ei mayim. The phrase means “outlets of waters”: the source is named by the water that goes out from it. Set beside צִמָּאוֹן (tzimmaon), “thirsty place,” the line turns emergence into lack.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: to go out, emerge
יָצָא
This verb carries the motion contained in the name for the water’s outlet.
motsa: outlet, source, exit
מוֹצָא
This form names a place of emergence, clarifying what the verse calls watersprings.
totza’ah: outcome, result
תּוֹצָאָה
The same root connects what comes out with the result that follows.
THE PATTERN
In God’s hands, barrenness and abundance are reversible conditions.
He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.THE THREAD
He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.The same psalm turns the image in verse 33 around: wilderness becomes standing water, and dry ground becomes springs. Read together, the verses show both desolation and abundance as conditions that can be reversed.
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