What Does Psalm 84:8 Mean in the King James?
O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.
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 same address names God as ruler of hosts and God of Jacob, holding vast reach and personal nearness together.
THE MEANING
You address the LORD as both God of hosts and God of Jacob: vast authority and particular nearness share one address. “Hear” and “give ear” press the same request for attentive response, making this prayer a relationship voiced in the present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a God over all hosts is too vast to attend to one person’s prayer loosens here: the same God is also named the God of Jacob.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעָה
shim'ah
GROWS FROM
שמע
shama
To hear, listen, or heed; in this plea, to hear with a response.
The Hebrew verb שָׁמַע (shama), “hear,” can carry the sense of listening that takes account and responds. The parallel “give ear” makes the prayer ask for receptive attention, not merely the arrival of sound.
ALSO GROWS
shama: To hear, listen, or heed.
שָׁמַע
The verb behind the prayer’s appeal holds hearing and responsiveness together.
shemuah: A report or message that is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows how the root can describe what reaches a listener as well as the act of listening.
יַעֲקֹב
Ya'aqov
GROWS FROM
עקב
ʿaqav
Heel; by extension, following at the heel or grasping the heel.
The name Jacob is tied to the heel and the image of grasping or following at the heel. In “God of Jacob,” that human texture sits beside “God of hosts”: the prayer addresses both the universal and the particular.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaqev: Heel.
עָקֵב
The noun supplies the concrete image carried by the name Jacob.
ʿaqav: To follow at the heel; to supplant.
עָקַב
This verb expresses the grasping and following image associated with Jacob’s name.
THE PATTERN
Prayer is voiced as a cry that seeks a listening response.
The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;THE THREAD
I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.The same root שמע (shama), “hear,” appears in “hear my speech,” while “incline thine ear” echoes Psalm 84’s “give ear.” The second verse makes the listening requested here feel close and attentive.
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