What Does Psalm 109:13 Mean in the King James?
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
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 curse reaches past a person’s death: it attacks both the future and the name that carries their nature forward.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you the image of a curse aimed at more than one life: it cuts away a future line and erases the nature carried in a name from the next generation. Its violence is explicit, both posterity and remembrance are targeted.
THE ROOT
אַחֲרִיתוֹ
acharitô
GROWS FROM
אחר
After, behind; what comes later.
The word translated “posterity” carries the sense of what comes after: the future, the latter end. Paired with “the generation following,” it makes the target of the curse unmistakable, the continuation of his line.
ALSO GROWS
achar: After, behind.
אַחַר
This is the seed of the word for posterity: what comes later.
acharit: Latter end, future, posterity.
אַחֲרִית
This is the word in the verse; it points to the life and line still to come.
acharon: Last, latter.
אַחֲרוֹן
This branch keeps the root’s sense of what follows or comes last.
שְׁמָם
shemam
GROWS FROM
שם
Name; identity and reputation carried in memory.
Here, “name” is more than a label: it is the nature and story that can continue through those who remember it. To erase the name is to erase that continuing presence.
ALSO GROWS
shem tov: A good name; a good reputation.
שֵׁם טוֹב
A name carries the character by which a person is remembered.
shem olam: An enduring name.
שֵׁם עוֹלָם
This phrase shows a name continuing beyond one generation, the very continuity this curse targets.
יִמַּח
yimmaḥ
GROWS FROM
מחה
Wipe away, erase, blot out.
“blotted out” in this verse is yimmaḥ. The verb pictures active removal, sharper than a name merely fading from memory. The verse imagines the next generation as carrying no trace of that name.
ALSO GROWS
emḥeh: I will wipe out.
אֶמְחֶה
The same root appears in Genesis 6:7, where what is on the earth is to be wiped away.
vayyimmaḥ: And he wiped out.
וַיִּמַח
This form in Genesis 7:23 uses the same root for wiping away what had been on the ground.
THE PATTERN
A name is a continuing presence that scripture depicts as either erased from memory or preserved beyond a generation.
Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.THE THREAD
And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.The Hebrew verb behind “blotted out” is מָחָה (machah), meaning to wipe away or erase; Exodus uses the same root for being blotted out of a book. Here, that erasure reaches the name carried into the next generation.
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