What Does Psalm 139:3 Mean in the King James?
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
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
Your whole life is sifted into view: the road you tread and the moment you lie down are both known.
THE MEANING
Your route through the day and your lying down are both within God’s intimate knowing. The paths you tread are familiar to the One who sees the whole pattern of your life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that the still, private parts of your life fall outside God’s knowing dissolves here; the verse places lying down alongside every path.
THE ROOT
זֵרִיתָ
zērîtā
GROWS FROM
ז־ר־ה
z-r-h
To scatter or disperse; in the context of grain, to winnow or sift.
The form זֵרִיתָ (zērîtā, “you sift or winnow”) gives “compassest” the added image of thorough sifting. The verse places both your path and your lying down within that close attention.
ALSO GROWS
zārâ: To scatter, disperse, or winnow.
זָרָה
This verb supplies the sifting image beneath “compassest,” giving the verse a sense of your whole course being examined closely.
mizreh: A winnowing fork or shovel.
מִזְרֶה
The tool made for winnowing keeps the root’s image concrete: material is tossed and sifted through.
דְּרָכַי
derakhai
GROWS FROM
ד־ר־ך
d-r-k
To tread or step; the related noun is a path or road.
The Hebrew for “my ways” grows from the language of treading. Your ways are the tracks made by your steps, and every one of them is familiar to God.
ALSO GROWS
derekh: A way, road, or path.
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the noun at the center of “my ways”; it pictures a life as a route traveled.
dārakh: To tread or step.
דָּרַךְ
The verb reveals how a way becomes a way: it is formed by steps taken along it.
THE PATTERN
Divine knowing reaches the whole lived path, including ordinary movement and stillness.
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.THE THREAD
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.The same Hebrew word-family, דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, “way” or “path”), appears in both verses. Its connection to דָּרַךְ (dārakh, “to tread”) makes a life legible as the track of its steps, all held in God’s sight.
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