What Does Psalm 21:3 Mean in the King James?
For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness: thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head.
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 word “preventest” means God goes ahead to meet the king, so goodness arrives before the crown.
THE MEANING
Goodness meets you before honor rests on your head; the crown is set upon you, not fashioned by your own hand. What you receive is already moving toward you from God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that honor must be seized by getting ahead: here, goodness goes ahead of the king, and the crown is placed upon him.
THE ROOT
תְּקַדְּמֶנּוּ
teqaddemennu
GROWS FROM
קדם
q-d-m
To go before, precede, or meet.
The Hebrew pictures goodness coming to meet the king ahead of him. The English “preventest” once carried that sense of going before, so the verse holds both divine initiative and welcome.
ALSO GROWS
qedem: East, what is in front, or former time.
קֶדֶם
The same root can point toward what is ahead or what came before, deepening the sense that goodness precedes the king.
qadmoni: Ancient, former, or earlier.
קַדְמוֹנִי
This branch carries the root’s sense of what comes before, echoing goodness already in motion ahead of the king.
בִּרְכוֹת
birkhot
GROWS FROM
ברך
b-r-k
To bless; the root is also associated with the knee.
The blessings are not vague wishes: they are goodness bestowed upon the king. The root’s connection with the knee gives the blessing a posture of bending toward its recipient.
ALSO GROWS
berakhah: Blessing.
בְּרָכָה
This singular form makes clear that each blessing is a bestowed good, not an achievement the king constructs.
berekh: Knee.
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared root links blessing with bending, giving the king’s received goodness the shape of favor offered toward him.
עֲטֶרֶת
ateret
GROWS FROM
עטר
ʿ-ṭ-r
To surround or crown.
The crown is an encircling band placed on the king’s head. Its image is not only rank above him, but honor resting around him as a gift.
ALSO GROWS
ʿatar: To surround or crown.
עָטַר
The verb shows the action behind the image: the king is surrounded with honor.
atarah: Crown or diadem.
עֲטָרָה
This related noun keeps the image concrete: a crown encircles the head and marks honor received.
THE PATTERN
God’s goodness arrives as a gift and crowns the human life with honor.
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.THE THREAD
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.Psalm 21’s “preventest” comes from קדם (q-d-m), the root of “before”; Psalm 139 uses the related קֶדֶם (qedem) in “behind and before.” Together, the verses show goodness meeting the king within a presence that already surrounds him.
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