What Does Psalm 107:35 Mean in the King James?
He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.
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
God sets barren ground as a pool and dry ground as springs; the landscape itself becomes a place where water gathers and rises.
THE MEANING
The barren place before you is not fixed in barrenness: God sets it as a gathered pool and the dry ground as springs of water. What appears to have no source becomes a place where water comes forth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that a barren place can only remain barren, or that life can come only from ground already rich with it.
THE ROOT
יָשֵׂם
yāśēm
GROWS FROM
שׂים
שׂים (śîm) means to set, put, or place.
The Hebrew verb יָשֵׂם (yāśēm), “he sets,” presents the wilderness as being placed into a new condition. English “turneth” carries the change, while the root also lets you see the deliberate setting: wilderness as a pool, dry ground as springs.
ALSO GROWS
śîm: Set, put, place.
שִׂים
This form shares the root’s consonants and makes the action concrete: the land is set as a pool.
yāśîm: He sets or places.
יָשִׂים
This form keeps the same root consonants and repeats the verse’s active image of setting something into a new condition.
śîm lēv: Set the heart; attend.
שִׂים לֵב
The same verb can describe setting the heart toward something, as the verse describes setting the wilderness into a water-bearing state.
THE PATTERN
Divine restoration makes barren places themselves into sources of gathered and flowing water.
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.Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.THE THREAD
Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.Both verses use אֲגַם (ʾăgām), “pool”: here the wilderness becomes a pool, and there the rock does. The repeated image makes the source itself, wilderness or flint, part of the surprise.
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