What Does Psalm 107:38 Mean in the King James?
He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.
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 verse’s hidden hinge is that blessing means both life multiplying and what sustains it being kept from decrease.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of your life as a place where blessing includes increase and protection from diminishment. Its image holds flourishing and preservation together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that blessing only adds more while leaving what already exists exposed to loss is undone here: blessing also restrains decrease.
THE ROOT
וַיְבָרְכֵם
vayevarkhem
GROWS FROM
ב־ר־ך
b-r-k
To bless.
“blesseth” in this verse is vayevarkhem. The verse ties blessing to visible conditions: the people become many, and their livestock do not dwindle. The same consonants also appear in berekh (בֶּרֶךְ, knee), giving blessing a bodily echo of bending as its effects take shape in flourishing life.
ALSO GROWS
berakhah: blessing
בְּרָכָה
This noun carries the same BRK root: the blessing enacted in the verse is also named as a force that brings flourishing.
berekh: knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The same consonants name the knee, a concrete echo that brings a bodily dimension to the word for blessing.
THE PATTERN
Divine blessing is disclosed both in multiplication and in preservation from diminishment.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.Both verses use barak (בָּרַךְ, bless) and rabah (רָבָה, increase, become many). The psalm’s increase of people and preserved livestock echoes the creation blessing over living creatures: multiplication is part of blessing’s shape.
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