What Does Psalm 71:11 Mean in the King James?
Saying, God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him.
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 abandonment language as a weapon: declare there is no rescuer, and pursuit starts to sound permitted.
THE MEANING
This verse places a brutal sequence before you: someone declares a person abandoned, then urges others to pursue and seize him. The claim that no one can deliver him is the attackers’ premise, not proof that rescue is impossible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being targeted does not prove that God has abandoned you; an attacker’s confidence that no one will rescue you is part of the threat, not evidence that rescue is impossible.
THE ROOT
מַצִּיל
matsil
GROWS FROM
נצל
natsal
To snatch away or rescue; in a causative form, to deliver someone from danger.
“deliverer” in this verse is matsil. The Hebrew names a rescuer as someone who pulls a person out of danger or another’s grasp. That makes the line’s claim especially stark: the attackers say there is no one to extract him from their pursuit.
ALSO GROWS
nitsal: Be rescued or escape.
נִצַּל
This form makes the endangered person’s escape visible, sharpening what the attackers claim cannot happen.
matsil: A rescuer or deliverer.
מַצִּיל
This is the word in the verse: the threat depends on insisting that no rescuer is present.
עֲזָבוֹ
azavo
GROWS FROM
עזב
azav
To leave behind or abandon.
“forsaken” in this verse is azavo. The speakers make abandonment a claim about God, then turn that claim into cover for pursuit and capture. The root describes leaving someone behind; the verse shows how that accusation can be used against the vulnerable.
ALSO GROWS
azav: To leave or abandon.
עָזַב
The verb gives the accusation its force: someone is said to have been left behind.
azuv: Abandoned or left behind.
עָזוּב
This form describes the state the attackers attribute to him, as though vulnerability proves that no help remains.
THE PATTERN
A claim that God will not rescue the vulnerable becomes an accusation or taunt against them.
Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.THE THREAD
And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh:The Hebrew phrase וַיַּצִּלֵנִי (vayyatsileni, “and he delivered me”) uses the same root נצל (natsal, “rescue”) as the word for “deliverer” in Psalm 71:11. There, rescue means being pulled out of a pursuer’s reach, the very possibility the speakers in the psalm deny.
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