What Does Psalm 6:7 Mean in the King James?
Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of all mine enemies.
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 Hebrew word for adversaries echoes narrowness and distress, and the verse shows that pressure reaching all the way to the eye.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present bodily cost: pressure from adversaries can exhaust the eyes until they seem dim and aged. The Hebrew word translated “grief” also carries vexation and anger, so what wears the eye is sustained disturbance, not sadness alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that grief stays private and invisible: here, pressure is visible in the eyes themselves.
THE ROOT
צֹרְרָי
tsorerai
GROWS FROM
צרר
The root צָרַר (tsarar) can mean to bind or to act as an adversary.
The word translated “enemies” carries the sense of hostile pressure. Its consonants echo צַר (tsar), “narrow,” and צָרָה (tsarah), “distress,” making the connection between adversaries and constriction audible without requiring every form to have the same derivation.
ALSO GROWS
tsror: A bundle or tied packet.
צְרוֹר
This form makes the root’s binding sense concrete; the adversary presses in like something bound around the person.
tsar: Narrow or tight; also an adversary.
צָר
The shared consonants link the foe with narrowness, illuminating how opposition can constrict the field of ease.
tsarah: Distress or trouble.
צָרָה
This word names the distress that such pressure brings, joining the adversaries in the verse to the eye’s exhaustion.
מִכַּעַס
mikka'as
GROWS FROM
כעס
The root כָּעַס (ka’as) means vexation, anger, or provocation.
The word translated “grief” has an edge of vexation and anger. It presents the eye’s decline as the mark of ongoing disturbance, not only inward sadness.
ALSO GROWS
ka'as: Vexation or anger.
כַּעַס
This noun gives the verse’s grief a sharper quality: the eye is worn by what keeps troubling or provoking the person.
hik'is: To provoke or anger.
הִכְעִיס
The verbal form points to the force that stirs vexation, echoing the pressure of the adversaries named in the verse.
עֵינִי
eini
GROWS FROM
עין
עַיִן (ʿayin) means eye; the related form עֵין (ʿein) also means a spring or source of water.
Hebrew uses the same word for an eye and a spring. This places the eye not only as the organ of sight but as a point of emergence: grief exhausts the place through which the world is seen.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye or sight.
עַיִן
This is the bodily eye that the verse says is consumed by vexation.
ʿein: Spring or source of water.
עֵין
The shared word opens a connection between seeing and a source that flows; the verse’s eye is a source under strain.
THE PATTERN
Grief and pressure can become visible in sight itself, making the eyes register what the person bears.
Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.THE THREAD
Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.The rare Hebrew verb for the eye wasting away returns here in the same image. Psalm 31:9 makes the depletion more explicit by naming the eye, soul, and belly together.
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