What Does Psalm 69:25 Mean in the King James?
Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.
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 tents remain in the sentence, but everyone who made them a home is gone.
THE MEANING
The verse gives voice now to a wish that the homes of its enemies be emptied completely. It asks for no one to remain in their tents; the violence of the wish is total in the words themselves.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that prayer always asks for an enemy’s change of heart; this line asks for no enemy to remain in their home.
THE ROOT
נְשַׁמָּה
nəšammāh
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
š-m-m
To be desolate or devastated; related forms also describe being appalled or stunned.
The word translated “desolate” grows from שׁמם (š-m-m), a root whose forms name both a place laid waste and the shock of beholding devastation. The next line makes that devastation concrete: the tents are named, but no dweller remains.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, wasteland
שְׁמָמָה
This noun from the same root names the state of emptiness the verse calls upon.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled
שָׁמֵם
The root can describe a ruined place and the stunned response to its ruin, joining the landscape with the experience of seeing it.
יֹשֵׁב
yōšēv
GROWS FROM
ישב
y-š-b
To sit, remain, settle, or dwell.
The word translated “dwell” is יֹשֵׁב (yōšēv), “one who sits or remains”; the root holds dwelling and settled presence together. With “let none” before it, the verse pictures a household entirely emptied of anyone who can stay.
ALSO GROWS
yāšav: To sit, remain, or dwell
יָשַׁב
The verb carries dwelling as a staying presence, which the verse calls absent from the tents.
mōšāv: Dwelling, seat, or settlement
מוֹשָׁב
This related word names a place made for settled presence, sharpening the emptiness of a home with no one left to inhabit it.
THE PATTERN
In judgment, a dwelling’s vacancy becomes the visible sign that its inhabitants have been removed.
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.In mine ears said the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.THE THREAD
For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.Acts 1:20 repeats this line with “his” in place of “their,” then adds that another is to take his office. The vacancy in the image becomes a place emptied of its occupant and assigned to another.
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