What Does Psalm 91:12 Mean in the King James?
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
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’s protection is already beneath your step, lifting you before the stone can break your stride.
THE MEANING
Care meets you while you are moving, at the point where your next step can catch against what lies underfoot. The hands do more than comfort you after a stumble: they lift you through the vulnerable instant before impact. The verse holds protection as a presence already beneath your stride.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that you are alone with the hazard until after you fall.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂאוּנְךָ
yissa’unka
GROWS FROM
נָשָׂא
nasaʾ
To lift, carry, or bear, to raise a weight by taking it onto oneself.
The verb translated “bear thee up” shares its root with a word for a burden: the weight and the act of carrying it grow from the same seed. The hands take your weight and raise you before your foot strikes.
ALSO GROWS
massaʾ: A weight carried or lifted.
מַשָּׂא
The verse does not deny the stone’s presence; its image is of hands carrying you through the hazard.
nasiʾ: A leader or elevated one, from the same root of lifting.
נָשִׂיא
This branch echoes the action in the verse: bearing means actively raising, not merely cushioning you after a fall.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures care as carrying the vulnerable through danger and sustaining them beyond their own strength.
Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;THE THREAD
And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.“Bare” here shares the root נשא (nasaʾ, lift, carry, bear) with “bear thee up” in Psalm 91:12. The image of a parent carrying a child along the way makes the Psalm’s unseen hands intimate: protection takes your weight through the path.
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