What Does Psalm 119:50 Mean in the King James?
This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.
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’s utterance is a source of life already unfolding within affliction.
THE MEANING
You can be in affliction now and still be comforted by God’s word, because the verse names its effect as life. It does not say the affliction has ended; it names life in the middle of it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Affliction means life and comfort must wait until the trouble is over.
THE ROOT
חִיָּתְנִי
ḥiyyātanī
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive, or preserve life.
The word translated “quickened” comes from חיה (chayah), “to live.” The utterance’s effect is life itself, a connection Hebrew keeps visible in related words for “alive” and “life.”
ALSO GROWS
chai: Alive, living.
חַי
It shares the life-root behind “quickened,” joining the act of being made alive to the state of being alive.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This noun makes explicit what the verb expresses: the word brings life into the speaker’s affliction.
אִמְרָתְךָ
imratekha
GROWS FROM
אמר
To say or speak.
The Hebrew is imratekha, “your saying” or “your utterance,” from אמר (amar), “to say.” Beside the life-root חיה, it presents God’s word as speech that gives life, not merely information about it.
ALSO GROWS
amar: To say, speak.
אָמַר
The root keeps the spoken quality of “thy word” in view.
imrah: A saying, utterance.
אִמְרָה
This is the noun at the heart of the verse’s phrase “thy word”; it links the speaker’s life to God’s utterance.
THE PATTERN
God’s word sustains and gives life even where hunger, weakness, or affliction is present.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.THE THREAD
After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.Hosea uses חיה (chayah) for both being revived and living. That same life-root names what God’s utterance does in Psalm 119:50: life is present within distress.
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