What Does Psalm 83:16 Mean in the King James?
Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O LORD.
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 prayer makes disgrace the forced threshold to seeking: the shamed are meant to search for the LORD’s nature.
THE MEANING
The prayer holds a severe request in the present: its opponents’ faces are to be filled with disgrace so that they seek the LORD’s name. That name, שֵׁם (shem, name as nature), carries the LORD’s revealed identity and character. The verse keeps humiliation and seeking in the same movement: disgrace is the requested means, and seeking the LORD is its stated aim.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the belief that an enemy’s disgrace has no end beyond defeat: the prayer’s stated aim is that the shamed seek the LORD.
THE ROOT
וִיבַקְשׁוּ
wîvaqqešû
GROWS FROM
בקשׁ
בקשׁ (b-q-sh; baqash): seek, search for, request.
וִיבַקְשׁוּ (wîvaqqešû, may they seek) comes from בקשׁ (baqash, seek, search, request), whose branches include both a seeker and a petition. Its object is שֵׁם (shem, name as nature), so the prayer imagines disgrace turning their search toward the LORD’s revealed character.
ALSO GROWS
mevaqqēsh: One who seeks or requests.
מְבַקֵּשׁ
This branch makes the act in the verse into a person defined by seeking.
baqqāshāh: A request or petition.
בַּקָּשָׁה
This branch holds the asking sense within the same root, so seeking the LORD’s name can carry the force of petition as well as search.
מַלֵּא
mallēʾ
GROWS FROM
מלא
מלא (m-l-ʾ; male): be full, fill.
The imperative מַלֵּא (mallēʾ, fill) gives the disgrace an image of saturation across the face. Its root also names the state of being full, making the requested shame occupy the face rather than touch it lightly.
ALSO GROWS
maleʾ: Full or filled.
מָלֵא
The related state of being full sharpens the verse’s image of disgrace filling the face.
melōʾ: Fullness; that which fills.
מְלֹא
This noun keeps the verse’s act of filling connected to the resulting condition of fullness.
THE PATTERN
Seeking the LORD turns attention toward the knowledge of who he is and the nearness of his presence.
That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:THE THREAD
Seek the LORD, and his strength: seek his face evermore.Psalm 105:4 uses the same root בקשׁ (baqash, seek) in וּבַקְשׁוּ (ûvaqshû, seek) and directs the search toward פָּנָיו (pānāw, his face). Here the prayer first fills פְּנֵיהֶם (pənêhem, their faces) with disgrace, then aims their search at the LORD’s שֵׁם (shem, name as nature); the repeated face-and-seeking image joins humiliation to the hoped-for turn.
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