What Does Psalm 104:23 Mean?
A person goes out to his work and his labor until evening.
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
Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.THE KEY
Hebrew calls the worker אָדָם (adam), the ground-being, and names his labor with the root of service: human work belongs to the earth’s daily rhythm.
THE MEANING
You go out to work as a human shaped from the ground, part of the living world’s daily rhythm. Your labor fills the daylight stretch and reaches its boundary at evening.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that work must fill every hour is undone here: human labor has a boundary, and evening marks it.
THE ROOT
אָדָם
ʾāḏām
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾāḏām
Ground-being; אדם is linked by Hebrew wordplay to אדמה, ground or soil.
“A person” in this verse is ʾāḏām. אָדָם (adam) is linked in Hebrew wordplay to אֲדָמָה (adamah), ground: the worker is a ground-being. The verse places human effort within the life of the earth.
ALSO GROWS
ʾăḏāmāh: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
This is the ground word echoed by אָדָם, linking the human who works with the earth-shaped world.
ʾāḏōm: red
אָדֹם
The shared consonants carry the word-family’s association with redness, echoing the earth-colored wordplay that binds the human name to the ground.
לַעֲבֹדָתוֹ
laʿăvōḏāṯō
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿāḇaḏ
serve, work
“labor” in this verse is laʿăvōḏāṯō. עבד (avad) holds serving and working in one root. The verse’s “labour” therefore carries the texture of service within the day’s activity.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeḇeḏ: servant
עֶבֶד
The related noun makes the service carried in the root visible.
ʿăḇōḏāh: work, labor, service
עֲבוֹדָה
This is the work-and-service noun form that appears in the verse.
לְפָעֳלוֹ
ləpāʿŏlō
GROWS FROM
פעל
pāʿal
do, act, carry out
“work” in this verse is ləpāʿŏlō. פעל (pa’al) names doing or action, while עבד (avad) names working and serving. The verse holds the act and its service together in one day’s labor.
ALSO GROWS
pāʿal: do, act
פָּעַל
This verb form makes the root’s sense of action explicit.
pōʿal: work, deed
פֹּעַל
This related noun carries the sense of an action or its result, illuminating “his work” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Human work unfolds within an ordered rhythm of activity and cessation, marked by day and night.
The sun rises; they gather together, and in their dens they crouch.Six days you shall serve, and do all your work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.THE THREAD
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.The same root עבד (avad), meaning to work or serve, names the labor here and the work of tending the garden there. Together the verses place your daily labor within humanity’s role in the living world.
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