What Does Psalm 107:34 Mean in the King James?
A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
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 land does not merely cease to yield; it becomes salt-ground, as if the harm has changed what the ground is.
THE MEANING
A fruitful place becomes salt-land because of the wickedness of its inhabitants. The verse binds what people do to the conditions of the place they share. Fruitfulness is lost as a change in the ground itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wrongdoing stays private, leaving the shared ground untouched.
THE ROOT
לִמְלֵחָה
limleḥāh
GROWS FROM
מלח
m-l-ḥ
salt; to salt
“barrenness” in this verse is limleḥāh. The word for the land’s new condition is לִמְלֵחָה (limleḥāh, salt-land or salt-place), from מלח (m-l-ḥ, salt; to salt). A land of fruit becomes a land characterized by salt, not simply an empty field. Salt can also mark covenant elsewhere, so the desolation here comes from its place where fruitfulness was, not from a universal meaning of salt.
ALSO GROWS
melaḥ: Salt, the substance named in the salt-land.
מֶלַח
It makes the land’s changed condition concrete: the image is of ground marked by salt.
mālaḥ: To salt or season with salt.
מָלַח
This verbal branch lets the salt-land be heard as a condition of the ground, rather than an abstract lack of fruit.
melaḥ berit: Salt associated with covenant, as in Leviticus 2:13.
מֶלַח בְּרִית
The same salt word can mark covenant; here, its placement where fruit once grew gives it a desolating force.
THE PATTERN
When wrongdoing spreads through a people, its effects alter the shared conditions that let life flourish.
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.THE THREAD
But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.Psalm’s לִמְלֵחָה (limleḥāh, salt-land) and Ezekiel’s מֶלַח (melaḥ, salt) share the root מלח (m-l-ḥ). Ezekiel places salt beside marshes that remain unhealed, making the Psalm’s image a concrete condition of ground that no longer yields.
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