What Does Psalm 137:7 Mean in the King James?
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
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
Jerusalem carries the sound of wholeness, yet the taunt demands that it be stripped down to its foundation.
THE MEANING
The reader hears an unambiguous demand for Jerusalem’s ruin, repeated all the way down to its foundation. The plea to remember brings this cruelty before the LORD, where it cannot pass as an insignificant taunt.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a call for another’s ruin is harmless when spoken as a taunt, or disappears once the words are over.
THE ROOT
עָרוּ
ʿārû
GROWS FROM
ערה
ʿ-r-h
To be bare, make bare, or lay bare; the root also carries the sense of emptying or pouring out.
“Rase it” in this verse is ʿārû. The repeated command is more than a wish for damage: it calls for Jerusalem to be laid bare. The root’s sense of emptying gives the taunt its full force, a demand to leave nothing standing.
ALSO GROWS
ʿārâ: To lay bare or uncover
עָרָה
This verb exposes the stripping beneath the command to rase the city.
heʿĕrâ: Poured out or emptied
הֶעֱרָה
The same root’s emptying sense echoes the demand to reduce the city to its bare base.
הַיְסוֹד
hayesod
GROWS FROM
יסד
y-s-d
To set, establish, or lay a foundation.
“Foundation” in this verse is hayesod. The taunt reaches the very place from which a structure is established. The root connects the base being targeted with the act of founding: the demand is to undo what has been set in place.
ALSO GROWS
yāsad: To establish or found
יָסַד
The verb makes the foundation an act of setting something in place, which the taunt seeks to erase.
môsād: Foundation or base
מוֹסָד
This related noun keeps the focus on the structure’s established base.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be complete, whole, or sound.
Jerusalem’s name carries the sound and sense of shalom, wholeness. That name stands against the taunt’s demand to strip the city down to its foundation.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness or wellbeing
שָׁלוֹם
The city’s name echoes the wholeness that the call for destruction attacks.
shalem: Whole or complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch brings the contrast into focus: completeness is spoken against a demand for total dismantling.
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps the cry against violence before God so that devastation is neither hidden nor treated as forgettable.
Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily.And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?THE THREAD
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.The foundation in both verses grows from יסד (y-s-d), “to establish or found.” Psalm 137 names a demand to strip the base away; Isaiah names a foundation laid in Zion.
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