What Does Psalm 106:23 Mean?
And he said to cut them down, unless Moses, his chosen, had stood in the breach before him, to turn back his burning from ruining them.
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
Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them.THE KEY
The opening where destruction could pass through becomes the very place Moses stands to turn it back.
THE MEANING
A person stands in the rupture between a people and destruction, and wrath turns back from its destructive course. The breach is real, and so is the interruption. You are addressed by an image in which a rupture does not dictate its ending.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that once a rupture opens, destruction is inevitable.
THE ROOT
בַּפֶּרֶץ
ba-pérets
GROWS FROM
פרץ
parats
To break through or burst out; as a noun, a breach or opening made by breaking through.
English “breach” can sound like a passive gap; the Hebrew carries the force of something broken open. Moses stands inside that break, and the point of rupture becomes the point where destruction is checked.
ALSO GROWS
perets: Breach; an opening made by a break.
פֶּרֶץ
This is the noun used for the place where Moses stands, and it recurs in Ezekiel’s image of standing in the breach.
parats: Break out, burst through, spread.
פָּרַץ
The verb reveals the force inside the noun: the breach is where something has broken through.
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משה
mashah
To draw out.
Exodus 2:10 connects Moses’ name with being drawn out of the water. Here, the one whose name carries that movement stands in the opening where a people face destruction.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
This verb supplies the name’s meaning in the naming scene in Exodus 2:10.
meshitihu: “I drew him out.”
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This is the form used in Exodus 2:10, where Pharaoh’s daughter explains the name Moshe.
לְהָשִׁיב
lehashiv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To turn back, return, or restore by turning back.
“turn back” in this verse is lehashiv. The verb gives the scene a direction: wrath is turned back from destruction. The same root can describe return and restoration, so this turning changes the course of what is about to happen.
ALSO GROWS
shav: Returned; turned back.
שָׁב
This form carries the same return-motion expressed by “turn away” in the verse.
yeshovev: He restores or revives.
יְשׁוֹבֵב
Psalm 23:3 uses this form for restoration, showing how the root’s turning back can preserve and renew.
THE PATTERN
When someone stands in the opening where ruin would pass, the path to destruction can be interrupted.
And the LORD relented from the harm he had spoken of doing to his people.And I sought among them for a man who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, so that I would not ruin it, but I found none.Who is the one who condemns? It is the Anointed One who died, but more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also approaches on our behalf.THE THREAD
And I sought among them for a man who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, so that I would not ruin it, but I found none.Ezekiel uses the same Hebrew noun פֶּרֶץ (perets, “breach”) and the same image of standing there before God; it names the desired result too: the land is not destroyed. The echo opens Psalm’s breach into a recurring image of someone standing for others as destruction is held back.
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