What Does Psalm 137:5 Mean in the King James?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
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 hand’s skill is bound to the wholeness the heart keeps in memory.
THE MEANING
You hold Jerusalem so deeply in memory that forgetting her would mean your right hand losing its skill. The verse makes remembrance bodily: what you carry at your center shapes what your hand can do. Jerusalem bears the sound of wholeness, so the hand’s craft is tied to the wholeness you keep before you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Your ability is self-contained and untouched by what you remember.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
to be whole, complete, intact
The name carries the sound of shalom (שָׁלוֹם, wholeness). Forgetting Jerusalem is therefore more than losing a place from thought: the verse binds the hand’s skill to the wholeness that name holds.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This branch makes the quality carried in Jerusalem’s name explicit: wholeness is what the speaker refuses to forget.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch shows wholeness as an intact condition, echoing the verse’s bond between remembrance and the hand’s full capacity.
אֶשְׁכָּחֵךְ
’eshkachekh
GROWS FROM
שָׁכַח
sh-kh-ch
to forget, cease to remember
The Hebrew repeats this root: first, “if I forget you,” then, “let my right hand forget.” Remembrance is made physical here; when memory fails, the hand’s practiced skill is named as what fails with it.
ALSO GROWS
tishkach: let it forget
תִּשְׁכַּח
This is the second use of the root in the verse, extending the speaker’s feared forgetting from the heart’s memory to the hand.
nishkakhti: I am forgotten
נִשְׁכַּחְתִּי
In Psalm 31:12 this form describes being forgotten; the root can name loss that overtakes someone, as well as the speaker’s own feared act of forgetting.
THE PATTERN
What the heart keeps in remembrance becomes the ground of embodied action.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.Psalm 122:6 makes the name’s root audible by pairing Jerusalem with shalom (שָׁלוֹם, shalom, wholeness). Beside Psalm 137:5, the city is not only what the speaker remembers; the wholeness her name carries is bound to the hand’s skill.
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