What Does Psalm 109:10 Mean in the King James?
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
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
“Vagabonds” names motion without a place to land, making instability the children’s inheritance.
THE MEANING
This verse places before you a curse that reaches past one offender into the lives of his children: they wander, beg, and search for provision among ruins. Its force lies in making instability inherited, the children have no settled place from which to seek what sustains them. The KJV names that need as “bread”; the Hebrew closes with their seeking “from their ruins,” keeping the ruined place central.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that vengeance can be confined to its named target does not survive this verse: the curse deliberately reaches the children.
THE ROOT
יָנוּעוּ
yānūʿū
GROWS FROM
נוע
To move, waver, or wander.
“Vagabonds” can sound like a social label, but this root carries the fact of being set in motion and unable to settle. Here the curse makes that motion continuous, so displacement becomes the children’s condition.
ALSO GROWS
nāʿ: Moving or wandering.
נָע
This form also describes a wanderer in Genesis 4:12, carrying the sense of exile without settled footing.
tenuʿah: Movement or motion.
תְּנוּעָה
This related noun keeps the root’s focus on motion itself, rather than travel toward a destination.
מֵחָרְבֹתֵיהֶם
mēḥorbōtēhem
GROWS FROM
חרב
To dry out, become waste or desolate, or lay waste.
“desolate places” in this verse is mēḥorbōtēhem. The phrase locates need in a ruined place, so the lack is not only the absence of food but the collapse of the place from which provision comes. The root’s sense of dryness and waste makes the image more severe: they search for sustenance among what has been laid waste.
ALSO GROWS
ḥorbāh: Ruin or desolation.
חָרְבָּה
This noun makes the children’s search take place amid the aftermath of destruction.
ḥārēv: Desolate or wasted.
חָרֵב
This related form points to land stripped of fruitfulness or settled life.
וְדָרְשׁוּ
vedarshu
GROWS FROM
דרש
To seek, inquire, or require.
“seek” in this verse is vedarshu. The root joins seeking with inquiring and requiring: this is an active search for what sustains life. Paired with ruins, it makes the children’s need something they must pursue from a place emptied of provision.
ALSO GROWS
midrāsh: Inquiry or interpretation.
מִדְרָשׁ
This related word preserves the root’s sense of searching into something.
derishah: Request, inquiry, or demand.
דְּרִישָׁה
This form shows how seeking can carry the force of asking or requiring.
THE PATTERN
A curse can make harm outlive its named target by placing its cost on the household and descendants.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:THE THREAD
When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.Genesis describes Cain as נָע (nāʿ, “wandering”), from the same root נוע (n-w-ʿ, “to move or wander”) that forms “vagabonds” here; beside it stands נָד (nād, “fugitive or wandering”), from a distinct root. Genesis also pairs this wandering with ground that no longer yields its strength, echoing the children who search for bread among ruins.
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