What Does Psalm 85:3 Mean in the King James?
Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.
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 verse pictures anger as something gathered back and turned away, not a force that must keep advancing.
THE MEANING
The anger over you can end completely: it is gathered away, and the one who burns turns from that heat. The verse holds the anger’s reality and its removal together; the turn is complete.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once anger is fully kindled, it must have the final word.
THE ROOT
אָסַפְתָּ
asaphta
GROWS FROM
אָסַף
asaph
gather, collect
The KJV gives the outcome, “taken away”, while the Hebrew verb’s seed means gathering or collecting. The verse pictures the whole of wrath gathered away, then pairs that gathering with a turn back.
ALSO GROWS
asif: ingathering, harvest
אָסִיף
A harvest is gathered in; the same root makes removal here feel like a real gathering, not merely a change of label.
me'asef: gatherer; rear guard
מְאַסֵּף
The rear guard gathers those behind, showing the root’s movement of collecting and drawing together.
הֱשִׁיבוֹתָ
heshivota
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
turn back, return; in a causative form, bring back or restore
“turned thyself” in this verse is heshivota. The verb comes from shuv, the root of turning and returning; its form here expresses turning something back. Anger does not simply fade in the verse: its direction changes.
ALSO GROWS
shav: returned, turned back
שָׁב
This form makes the change of direction in the verse concrete.
teshuvah: turning, return
תְּשׁוּבָה
The same root names return as a movement, echoing the reversal of anger here.
חֲרוֹן
charon
GROWS FROM
חָרָה
charah
be hot, burn, become angry
Fierceness is charon, from charah, “to burn” or “be hot.” Beside אַף (aph, “nostril; anger”), the phrase keeps a bodily image of anger as heat in the nostrils, and says that heat turns away.
ALSO GROWS
charah: burn, be hot, become angry
חָרָה
This verb exposes the heat inside the English word “fierceness.”
chori: burning heat, wrath
חֳרִי
This related form keeps the same image of anger as heat, clarifying what the verse says is turned away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures anger as capable of being turned away or put aside, so its heat need not be the final movement.
And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:THE THREAD
But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath.Psalm 78:38 uses the same שׁוּב (shuv, “turn/return”) root in “turned he his anger away.” It makes the movement here clearer: anger is turned back, and wrath is not stirred up again.
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