What Does Psalm 73:3 Mean in the King James?
For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
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
What looks like prosperity here is called shalom, wholeness, so the envy is aimed at the wicked appearing whole.
THE MEANING
You can see people who disregard what is right appearing to live at ease, and envy rises because their lives seem whole. The verse names the strain plainly: what you see in them presses against your sense of what life should reward. It gives that envy words without making appearances the whole truth.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
To be whole, complete, or sound.
“prosperity” in this verse is shalom. Shalom can hold well-being, peace, and wholeness together. The verse names what the speaker sees as the wicked’s apparent completeness, not merely their riches.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete, sound.
שָׁלֵם
It makes visible the sense of completeness contained in the prosperity the speaker envies.
shillem: Repay, recompense, or restore.
שִׁלֵּם
This branch carries the root’s movement toward making something complete or settling what is due.
קִנֵּאתִי
qinne'ti
GROWS FROM
קנא
To be jealous or zealous.
“envious” in this verse is qinne'ti. The root holds jealousy and zeal together as an intense response to what another possesses. Here that intensity is drawn toward the wicked person’s apparent shalom.
ALSO GROWS
qin'ah: Jealousy or zeal.
קִנְאָה
It shows that the verse’s envy carries the force of a charged, consuming attention.
qanna: Jealous or zealous.
קַנָּא
The related adjective keeps the same intensity visible across other forms of the root.
THE PATTERN
Visible good fortune does not sort cleanly along lines of goodness, and the mismatch strains the eye that expects it to.
Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.THE THREAD
There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.Both verses use shalom: Psalm 73:3 calls the wicked’s apparent well-being their prosperity, while Isaiah says there is no shalom for the wicked. Their shared root opens a distinction between what looks whole to the eye and wholeness itself.
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