What Does Psalm 102:20 Mean?
To hear and respond to the groaning of the bound one, to loose the children of death.
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
To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death;THE KEY
The Hebrew verb translated “loose” means “open,” so release appears as a way opened through what had been closed.
THE MEANING
Your groaning in confinement is heard, and the verse places an opening beside those bound toward death. Captivity and mortality are named plainly, yet neither is the whole picture.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that being trapped means you are unheard, or that a condition marked by death cannot be opened.
THE ROOT
לִפְתֹּחַ
liphtoach
GROWS FROM
פתח
Open; make an opening.
The Hebrew verb pictures release as an opening. English “loose” names the result; the root shows the way through confinement: what is shut becomes open.
ALSO GROWS
petach: Opening; doorway.
פֶּתַח
The doorway is an opening through which someone can pass, giving the verse’s release a concrete image.
patuach: Open.
פָּתוּחַ
This form describes the state created by the verse’s action: the way is open.
אָסִיר
asir
GROWS FROM
אסר
Bind; tie up.
“bound one” in this verse is asir. The word for prisoner carries the sense of being bound within it. Set beside פתח, “open,” the verse places binding and an opening in the same breath.
ALSO GROWS
asar: To bind; tie up.
אָסַר
This verb shows the binding action beneath the prisoner’s condition.
asur: Bound; forbidden.
אָסוּר
This form links being physically bound with being held back from a way forward.
תְּמוּתָה
temutah
GROWS FROM
מות
Die; death.
“children of death” in this verse is temutah. The Hebrew phrase is literally “sons of death,” giving the death-bound condition a stark image. The verse sets an opening beside those described as belonging to death’s domain.
ALSO GROWS
mut: To die.
מוּת
The verb names the movement toward death that the verse holds in view.
mavet: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun shares the root and makes explicit the condition named in “sons of death.”
THE PATTERN
When the groaning of the confined is heard, the way toward release opens.
And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.Who makes judgment for the pressed, who gives bread to the hungry. The LORD loosens the bound.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
Open to me the gates of alignment; I enter them, and I extend my hands to the LORD.The verb “open” in both verses comes from the Hebrew root פתח (patach). Psalm 118 uses it for gates the speaker enters; Psalm 102 applies the same opening image to those bound toward death.
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