What Does Psalm 55:15 Mean in the King James?
Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.
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 curse asks for the living to be dragged into Sheol: “quick” keeps life and the realm of death colliding in the same image.
THE MEANING
The verse voices a severe wish for death to overtake people while they are still alive, because evil occupies both their dwellings and their inner midst. “Hell” renders Sheol, the grave or realm of the dead; “quick” means alive. The curse keeps its full violence in view.
THE ROOT
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live; to remain alive or be revived.
“quick” in this verse is chayyim. The word means “alive,” not “quickly,” so the verse pictures people descending into Sheol while still living. The life-word and the realm of the dead meet in one jarring image.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living, alive
חַי
It shares the same life-root as the people pictured descending alive.
ḥāyāh: To live
חָיָה
The verb makes explicit the life that the verse holds beside Sheol.
heḥĕyāh: To revive, keep alive
הֶחֱיָה
This causative form shows the root can describe life being sustained or restored.
מָוֶת
māvet
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
To die; death.
The root joins death as a state with dying as an action. Here death is made active: it seizes, and the living are pictured going down.
ALSO GROWS
mēt: Dead
מֵת
This describes the state associated with the death named in the verse.
mōt: To die, dying
מוֹת
The verbal form makes death a process, matching the verse’s forceful movement downward.
yāmût: He will die
יָמוּת
This form carries the same root into a direct statement of dying.
רָעוֹת
raʿot
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or harmful; to do evil.
The Hebrew is plural: “evils” or “harms.” Set inside their dwellings and among them, the word gives wickedness the concrete force of harm lodged within their lives.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil
רַע
This adjective shares the root behind the plural “evils” in the verse.
raʿāh: Evil, harm
רָעָה
This form carries the same root’s sense of harmful wrong.
hērēaʿ: To do harm, act wickedly
הֵרֵעַ
This verbal form shows the root can name harmful action, not only a condition.
THE PATTERN
The harm people set in motion can turn back upon them as their own downfall.
He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.THE THREAD
Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:Proverbs uses the same word for “alive” beside Sheol, here rendered “the grave,” as Psalm 55:15. In Proverbs, violent people speak of swallowing others alive; the psalm turns that terrifying descent back upon them.
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