What Does Psalm 83:10 Mean in the King James?
Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.
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 earth that receives the defeated shares its name-root with the human being: the fallen return to the ground from which humanity takes its name.
THE MEANING
The verse gives defeat a physical endpoint: bodies become dung on the ground, and the earth receives what once stood against it. Its image reaches the reader now with a blunt measure of power: no force exempts a body from returning to the ground.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that might can secure permanence: even the powerful become mortal matter on the ground.
THE ROOT
לָאֲדָמָה
la'adamah
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
Be red; the reddish ground or soil.
The same consonants link אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground), אָדָם (adam, human), and אָדֹם (adom, red). The verse’s earth is therefore more than a surface beneath the defeated: it is the ground whose name echoes the human being returning to soil.
ALSO GROWS
adam: human, the ground-being
אָדָם
The shared root joins the human to the earth that receives the fallen.
adom: red
אָדֹם
The word-family carries the color of reddish soil, making the link between human and ground audible in the language.
נִשְׁמְדוּ
nishmedu
GROWS FROM
שמד
sh-m-d
Destroy, annihilate, bring to ruin.
“perished” in this verse is nishmedu. This verb names destruction, not a quiet fading. The verse makes that ruin visible and bodily: the destroyed are reduced to what the earth can receive.
ALSO GROWS
shemed: destruction, ruin
שֶׁמֶד
The noun names the state of ruin toward which the verse’s verb moves.
hishmid: to destroy, annihilate
הִשְׁמִיד
This causative form shows the same root as an active bringing-to-ruin.
THE PATTERN
Earthly bodies share a common return to decay, however unequal their power or standing.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:THE THREAD
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.The same word, אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground), lies beneath Psalm 83:10’s “earth” and Genesis 3:19’s “ground.” Genesis makes explicit the return implied here: human bodies go back to the soil from which humanity takes its name.
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