What Does Psalm 10:2 Mean?
The wicked, in his swelling, burns after the bowed ones; let them be seized in the schemes they have planned.
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
The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.THE KEY
The Hebrew root דלק (dālaq, burn or pursue) gives the word “persecute” the heat of a fire at the vulnerable person’s back.
THE MEANING
This verse names a pattern that is alive now: pride raises one person over another and turns the vulnerable into the target of a heated chase. It voices a demand that the devices prepared for another close around the people who devised them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the powerful can pursue the vulnerable and leave their own designs untouched; the verse asks that those designs become the pursuers’ snare.
THE ROOT
יִדְלַק
yidlaq
GROWS FROM
דלק
dālaq
Burn or kindle; the same root also carries the sense of pursuing.
“burns after” in this verse is yidlaq. The verb יִדְלַק (yidlaq, pursues) belongs to a root that also means to burn or kindle. Persecution here is not a distant following: the word carries the heat and pressure of a chase.
ALSO GROWS
dālaq: Burn, kindle; pursue
דָּלַק
The root holds burning and pursuit together, giving the verse’s persecution a sense of heat.
dəlēqāh: Pursuit, chase
דְּלֵקָה
This noun from the same root makes the chase itself visible as an ongoing pressure.
מְזִמּוֹת
mezimmot
GROWS FROM
זמם
zāmam
Devise or plot.
“schemes” in this verse is mezimmot. The devices are contrived plans, from the same root as the verb “to plot.” The verse pictures those plans becoming the enclosure that catches their makers.
ALSO GROWS
zāmam: Devise, plot
זָמַם
The root verb names the act that produces the devices in the verse.
məzimmāh: Plan, device
מְזִמָּה
This singular form shares the root and names a plan shaped by intention.
בְּגַאֲוַת
bega'avat
GROWS FROM
גאה
gāʾāh
Rise, be high, exalt oneself.
“in his swelling” in this verse is bega'avat. The root of pride carries the motion of rising or being high. In this verse, self-exaltation becomes the posture from which the vulnerable are pursued.
ALSO GROWS
gāʾāh: Rise, be high, be exalted
גָּאָה
This verb shows the upward movement underneath the verse’s word for pride.
gaʾavāh: Pride, exaltation
גַּאֲוָה
This noun shares the root and makes explicit the self-elevation that drives the pursuit.
THE PATTERN
Plans set in motion against another can return upon the one who set them in motion.
Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.So they hanged Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king's heat settled.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
And Jacob burned, and contended with Laban. And Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my rebellion? What is my falling short, that you have burned so hotly after me?Psalm 10:2 uses יִדְלַק (yidlaq, pursues), from the root דלק (dālaq, burn or pursue); Genesis 31:36 uses that same root in “hotly pursued.” The heat visible in Genesis brings out the pressure carried by the pursuit in this verse.
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