What Does Psalm 105:33 Mean?
He struck their vines and their fig trees, and broke the trees of their borders.
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
He smote their vines also and their fig trees; and brake the trees of their coasts.THE KEY
The strike reaches beyond fruit-bearing vines and figs to the trees marking the territory itself.
THE MEANING
God’s strike falls on the vines and fig trees, then breaks the trees of their territory. Fruit-bearing life and the trees at the land’s edges are both under the blow.
THE ROOT
וַיְשַׁבֵּר
vayeshabber
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter.
“broke” in this verse is vayeshabber. English “brake” can sound like ordinary damage, but שבר also names breakage and the force of something breaking against a surface. Here the action is rupture: the trees of the territory are shattered.
ALSO GROWS
shever: Breakage, fracture, ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This branch names the rupture itself, showing the force carried by “brake.”
mishbar: Breaker; breaking wave or surf.
מִשְׁבָּר
The same root describes a wave as a breaker, linking the broken trees to a force that crashes against and breaks what it meets.
וַיַּךְ
vayyakh
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
To strike or smite.
“struck” in this verse is vayyakh. The root’s noun מַכָּה can mean both a blow and a plague, joining a single strike to the language of calamity. Here the blow lands on the land’s fruit-bearing growth before the verse names the trees being broken.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: Blow; plague.
מַכָּה
The word connects the act of striking with the larger force of a calamity.
makkeh: One who strikes; a striker.
מַכֵּה
This branch gives the root an agent as well as an action, keeping the force of the strike in view.
THE PATTERN
Judgment is pictured as reaching into the land’s productive life and stripping its trees and fruit.
He turns a fruitful land into a salt land, for the harm of those who settle in it.The vine has withered, the fig tree wilts; pomegranate, date palm, and apple, all the trees of the field, have dried up; for the leaping has withered from the children of humankind.The first messenger sounds, and there comes hail and fire mixed with blood, and they are thrown upon the earth; and the third part of the trees is burned down, and all green grass is burned down.THE THREAD
And the hail struck throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast, and the hail struck all the grass of the field, and shattered every tree of the field.Exodus uses the same roots for “smote” (נכה) and “brake” (שבר), widening the blow from the vines and fig trees here to every herb and tree in the field. The shared words make the strike and the breaking part of one connected devastation.
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