What Does Psalm 37:10 Mean in the King James?
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
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 turns absence into something you can inspect: you look for the wicked where he stood, and find he is gone.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into the reader’s present: wicked power can fill the view without lasting. You can look for the place it seemed to secure and find the one who occupied it gone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what looks firmly established now must keep its place.
THE ROOT
מְקוֹמוֹ
meqōmô
GROWS FROM
קום
q-w-m
to stand, rise; the place is a standing-place
English “place” sounds like location alone, but מְקוֹמוֹ (meqōmô, “his place”) belongs to the root קום (q-w-m, “stand, rise”). The verse has you inspect where the wicked stood, then says he is no longer there.
ALSO GROWS
qûm: to stand, rise
קוּם
This root’s central action gives “place” the sense of a footing where someone stands.
hēqîm: to raise, set up, establish
הֵקִים
This causative form shows the same root describing what is established; the verse’s figure has no lasting standing there.
וְהִתְבּוֹנַנְתָּ
vehitbonanta
GROWS FROM
בין
b-y-n
to discern, understand
The verb translated “diligently consider” belongs to the root family of discernment and understanding. The verse presents the absence as something the reader can see by looking closely at the place.
ALSO GROWS
bein: between, among
בֵּין
The word for “between” belongs to this discerning family, which attends to distinctions and what is present or absent.
binah: understanding, discernment
בִּינָה
This noun makes explicit the perception carried by the verb: the place is examined and its absence recognized.
THE PATTERN
Visible human power can seem fixed in its place while time reveals how briefly it stands.
How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors.That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:THE THREAD
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.Psalm 103:16 uses the same Hebrew word מְקוֹם (maqom, “place”) for what is left behind when the grass is gone. The shared word makes disappearance something that can be traced through the place where a presence once stood.
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