What Does Psalm 9:20 Mean in the King James?
Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. 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 fear laid on the nations exposes that no collective power can make mortal humans more than human.
THE MEANING
The verse asks the LORD to set fear upon the nations until they recognize themselves as mortal human beings. No reach, title, or force makes a people more than human. Selah leaves that recognition suspended in the present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a nation’s scale and force make it immune to limits dissolves here: the nations remain mortal humans.
THE ROOT
אֱנוֹשׁ
ʾĕnōš
GROWS FROM
אנש
ʾ-n-š
To be weak or sick; the related noun describes a frail, mortal human.
“Men” can sound like a neutral category, but אֱנוֹשׁ (ʾĕnōš, mortal human) carries human frailty within it. The nations are asked to recognize that their power does not change their mortal nature.
ALSO GROWS
ʾānaš: To be weak or sick
אָנַשׁ
This verb exposes the vulnerability carried beneath the verse’s word for human beings.
ʾĕnûšāh: Grievous or incurable, as of a wound
אֱנוּשָׁה
This related form carries the root’s sense of frailty into an image of human vulnerability.
יֵדְעוּ
yēdʿû
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or perceive; knowing by encounter, not merely by information.
The verse uses יָדַע (yādaʿ, know or perceive) for the nations’ recognition of themselves. The point is not simply hearing that humans are mortal, but perceiving that truth as their own nature.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or perceive
יָדַע
This is the verb behind “may know,” making the verse a call for recognition that reaches the knower.
daʿat: Knowledge or understanding
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows the movement from receiving a fact to holding it as understanding.
THE PATTERN
Human power and life remain finite beneath the LORD’s authority.
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.THE THREAD
As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.The word translated “man” here is אֱנוֹשׁ (ʾĕnōš), the same word rendered “men” in Psalm 9:20. Psalm 103 gives that mortal nature a measure of time: even when a people flourishes, its life remains finite.
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