What Does Psalm 4:2 Mean in the King James?
O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah.
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 exposes a reversal of value: what has weight is made shameful while emptiness and falsehood become objects of love and pursuit.
THE MEANING
The question confronts you with an ongoing exchange: what has weight is turned into disgrace, while emptiness is loved and falsehood pursued. The repeated “how long” makes the contradiction visible as a sustained allegiance. The verse names the pattern without disguising what it is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that desire can make an empty pursuit substantial: what is empty remains empty, even when it is loved.
THE ROOT
כְּבוֹדִי
kevodi
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to carry honor or importance.
The word for glory carries the sense of weight. The verse says that what has weight is turned into disgrace, so the injury is a reversal of value: what should be treated as weighty is recast as contemptible.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
The physical sense of weight shows what lies beneath glory: something with substance and consequence.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
Honor is the act of giving weight; turning glory into shame reverses what is treated as worthy.
רִיק
riq
GROWS FROM
ריק
r-y-q
To be empty or to empty out.
“vanity” in this verse is riq. The word points to emptiness itself, not merely to something foolish. Beside the pursuit of falsehood, it shows desire fastening onto what has no substance to hold.
ALSO GROWS
req: Empty, void of substance.
רֵיק
This form makes plain that what is loved here is defined by its emptiness.
reqam: Empty-handed or without result.
רֵיקָם
The shared root connects emptiness with an outcome that leaves nothing in hand.
heriq: To empty or pour out.
הֵרִיק
This verbal branch gives emptiness motion: what is pursued can leave a person emptied.
כָזָב
kazav
GROWS FROM
כזב
k-z-b
To lie or be false.
The word rendered “leasing” names falsehood, and its root also works as a verb meaning to lie or be false. The verse pairs that deception with emptiness, exposing the object of pursuit as both insubstantial and untrue.
ALSO GROWS
kazav: To lie or prove false.
כָּזַב
The verb makes falsehood an active deception, not just an inaccurate idea.
kazav: A lie or falsehood.
כָּזָב
This noun names what the verse says people seek.
THE PATTERN
When people give allegiance to what is false and empty, they exchange what has weight for shame and take on the shape of what they pursue.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.THE THREAD
In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.This verse uses the same Hebrew word כָּבוֹד (kavod, glory and weight) as the current verse, but places the speaker’s glory in God. That shared word opens the question further: the verse can describe weight turned to shame, while this one locates the speaker’s weight in God.
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