What Does Psalm 75:8 Mean in the King James?
For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink 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 dregs are not what escapes the cup; they are what the wicked must wring out and drink.
THE MEANING
The verse places judgment in the LORD’s hand as a prepared cup, poured out in full measure. Its hard image is that the wicked drink through to the bitter remainder; nothing is left outside the reckoning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the bitter remainder of wrongdoing can simply be left behind: here, the dregs are part of the portion that must be drunk.
THE ROOT
שְׁמָרֶיהָ
shemareha
GROWS FROM
שמר
to keep, guard, preserve
The word for the cup’s dregs belongs to the same Hebrew word family as שָׁמַר (shamar), “to keep or guard.” English names only the residue; the Hebrew also echoes what has settled and been kept, so judgment reaches even what remains at the bottom.
ALSO GROWS
shamar: to keep, guard, preserve
שָׁמַר
This is the root behind the word for the cup’s dregs, linking what is retained in the wine with the verse’s image of a portion that remains to be drunk.
shomer: keeper, guard, watchman
שֹׁמֵר
This form carries the root’s sense of guarding or keeping, echoing the idea of what is held back and retained.
mishmeret: guard, watch, charge
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch names what is kept under watch; beside the dregs, it makes the root’s language of keeping audible beneath the English word “residue.”
THE PATTERN
The cup image makes judgment a portion assigned by God, poured out and fully drunk.
Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:THE THREAD
And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word family, שְׁמָרִים (shemarim), for wine resting on its lees. Here that settled wine belongs to a feast; in Psalm 75, the same root’s image of what remains in the cup becomes the final portion the wicked drink.
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