What Does Psalm 22:24 Mean in the King James?
For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
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 person called “afflicted” here is the same עָנִי that Psalm 34:6 calls “poor”: vulnerability does not place the cry outside God’s hearing.
THE MEANING
Your affliction is not despised or treated as something to hide. The face is not turned away from you; when you cry, you are heard. Being heard is present within the distress, before the verse says anything about its ending.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that your suffering makes you repulsive to God or that your cry disappears unheard.
THE ROOT
עָנִי
ʿānî
GROWS FROM
ענה
To be bowed down, humbled, or afflicted.
English gives you an affliction and an afflicted person, but Hebrew keeps both within the same root: the distress and the one bent under it share one seed. Psalm 34:6 uses this same word, עָנִי, for “poor,” showing how English divides what Hebrew holds together.
ALSO GROWS
ʿŏnî: Affliction, misery
עֳנִי
This is the noun for the distress paired with the afflicted person in the verse; both come from the same root.
ʿānî: Poor, afflicted, or lowly person
עָנִי
Psalm 34:6 uses this same word for the “poor man” who cries and is heard.
שָׁמֵעַ
shomeaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, or heed.
The word translated “heard” belongs to the same root as shema, “hear” or “listen.” The verse presents the cry as received by an attentive hearer, rather than disappearing into silence.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear; listen
שְׁמַע
The familiar call to hear comes from the same root, linking hearing with attentive listening.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings; something heard
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names what has reached someone’s hearing, echoing the verse’s movement from cry to reception.
THE PATTERN
A cry from within affliction reaches God as something seen and heard.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.Psalm 34:6 calls the one who cries עָנִי (ʿānî), the very same Hebrew word translated “afflicted” in Psalm 22:24. Both verses show the person in distress crying out and being heard.
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