What Does Nehemiah 4:5 Mean?
Do not cover their crookedness, and do not wipe away their falling short from your face, for they have provoked you in the faces of the builders.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And cover not their iniquity, and let not their sin be blotted out from before thee: for they have provoked thee to anger before the builders.THE KEY
Here, a plea for justice is a refusal to let wrongdoing become invisible.
THE MEANING
When harm reaches your work in the open, this verse names a refusal to have it hidden or erased from God’s sight. The crookedness remains before God; even the anger it provokes stays visible. The prayer lets the injury stand without softening it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Covering wrongdoing makes it disappear from God’s sight.
THE ROOT
תְּכַס
tekhas
GROWS FROM
כסה
kāsâ
To cover, conceal, or keep out of sight.
“cover” in this verse is tekhas. The prayer places covering and blotting out side by side: first the crookedness is not to be hidden, then the sin is not to be erased from God’s sight. The root’s image makes the plea about keeping the injury visible, not making it disappear.
ALSO GROWS
mekhasseh: One who covers; covering.
מְכַסֶּה
This active form carries the same root letters, כ־ס־ה, and shows the covering as an action someone performs.
mikhseh: A covering or protective layer.
מִכְסֶה
This noun carries the same root letters and makes the image tangible: a covering can shield what lies beneath, the very concealment this prayer refuses.
THE PATTERN
Wrongdoing does not vanish from God’s sight simply because it is covered; Scripture shows it exposed, remembered, and answerable.
Whoever covers his rebellions shall not prosper, but whoever speaks them into the open and lets them go shall be shown compassion.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.Let the crookedness of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and let the falling short of his mother not be wiped away.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcomings are covered.Psalm 32 uses the same Hebrew root כסה (kāsâ, “cover”) for the sin that is “covered.” The root holds the act of covering in common, while the contexts differ: here the plea is that wrongdoing not be hidden; in the Psalm, covering appears beside forgiveness.
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