What Does Psalm 18:23 Mean in the King James?
I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity.
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 verse pictures uprightness as wholeness with God, while self-guarding keeps the speaker’s own crookedness from ruling that wholeness.
THE MEANING
You stand in wholeness with God while recognizing the crookedness that is yours. The verse joins that wholeness to keeping watch over yourself, so integrity includes awareness of what could pull you off course.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that being upright means having nothing in yourself to guard against.
THE ROOT
תָּמִים
tamim
GROWS FROM
תמם
To be complete or whole.
“upright” in this verse is tamim. The Hebrew word carries the sense of wholeness, and it stands beside עִמּוֹ (immo, “with him”). Uprightness here holds the sense of being whole with God, even as the speaker acknowledges the crookedness that is his own.
ALSO GROWS
tamam: To be complete, come to an end.
תָּמַם
The verb shows the action beneath uprightness: coming to completeness or wholeness.
tom: Integrity, completeness.
תֹּם
This noun carries the same family’s sense of wholeness into the quality the verse calls uprightness.
וָאֶשְׁתַּמֵּר
va’eshtammer
GROWS FROM
שמר
To keep watch, guard, or preserve.
“kept myself” in this verse is va’eshtammer. The verb carries the sense of guarding oneself, not merely avoiding an act. Its root also names watchfulness and keeping; the speaker is both the one who watches and the one being kept from his own crookedness.
ALSO GROWS
shamar: To guard, keep, watch.
שָׁמַר
This verb names the root action contained in “kept myself.”
mishmeret: A guard, watch, or charge.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
The noun makes the root’s watchfulness concrete, illuminating self-keeping as a sustained guard.
THE PATTERN
Wholeness holds as a person keeps watch over the disorder that can rise within.
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.THE THREAD
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.“Undefiled” here and “upright” in Psalm 18 come from the Hebrew root תמם, carrying the sense of wholeness. What reads in English as upright conduct and an undefiled path shares one root image: a life made whole in its way.
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