What Does Psalm 109:9 Mean in the King James?
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
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 extends one man’s destruction into two broken bonds: children without a father and a wife without her husband.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the curse its full reach: a man’s death leaves his children fatherless and his wife widowed. The harm does not end with its target; it names the family members who carry the loss.
THE ROOT
יְתוֹמִים
yĕtômîm
GROWS FROM
יתם
y-t-m
to be orphaned, bereft of a father
The Hebrew word names the children as orphans, giving their loss a recognized status rather than merely describing an absent parent. The same term appears where scripture names the fatherless among those owed care, so the curse reaches people already made vulnerable by the household rupture.
ALSO GROWS
yātôm: an orphan
יָתוֹם
The singular names the condition the verse places on his children together.
yĕtômîm: orphans, fatherless children
יְתוֹמִים
This plural form makes the imposed loss belong to the children as a group.
THE PATTERN
Fatherlessness and widowhood mark the exposed edge of household rupture, recurring in scripture as a measure of justice and care.
Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.Psalm 109:9 names fatherlessness and widowhood as the curse’s outcome; Psalm 68:5 repeats both conditions and places them within God’s care. The shared terms make the damage here visible against scripture’s recurring attention to the people left exposed.
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