What Does Psalm 106:29 Mean?
Thus they vexed him with their deeds, and the striking burst out upon 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
Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them.THE KEY
What the KJV calls their “inventions” is their deeds, and the verse pictures the plague as a blow breaking in among the community.
THE MEANING
What you enact with others does not stay private; a community can bear consequences together. The verse speaks with full severity: deeds provoke God, and a plague breaks in among the people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
That harmful acts remain private and their consequences fall only on the people who commit them.
THE ROOT
מַעֲלָלֵיהֶם
ma'alaleihem
GROWS FROM
עלל
ʿ-l-l
act, do
“Inventions” can suggest ideas or devices today, but מַעֲלָלֵיהֶם means their deeds. The verse ties what happens among the people to what they actually do.
ALSO GROWS
ma'alal: deed, action
מַעֲלָל
This is the singular form behind “their deeds,” placing the verse’s emphasis on what is enacted.
alilah: deed, action
עֲלִילָה
This related word keeps the root’s focus on conduct and actions.
מַגֵּפָה
maggephah
GROWS FROM
נגף
n-g-p
strike, smite
The root places the image of a blow inside the word translated “plague,” so the calamity is pictured as striking, not as a neutral condition. Paired with “brake in,” the verse makes the outbreak feel like an impact entering the community.
ALSO GROWS
nagaph: strike, smite
נָגַף
The verb carries the striking force that remains within the word “plague.”
negef: blow, plague
נֶגֶף
This related noun echoes the passage’s image of calamity as a striking blow.
וַתִּפְרָץ
vatiphrats
GROWS FROM
פרץ
p-r-ts
break through, burst out
“burst out upon” in this verse is vatiphrats. The Hebrew verb belongs to a root meaning to break through. The KJV’s “brake in” carries that physical force, and the root connects the outbreak to the image of a breach into the group.
ALSO GROWS
perets: breach, break
פֶּרֶץ
A breach is an opening made by breaking through, echoing how the plague enters among them.
paruts: breached, broken open
פָּרוּץ
This related form reinforces the image of something no longer contained.
THE PATTERN
What a community enacts can return as a consequence the whole community bears.
For they sow breath, and they will reap the whirlwind. It has no stalk. The sprout will yield no meal. If it yields, strangers will swallow it up.Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.Let us not prostitute ourselves, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell.THE THREAD
And he went after the man of Israel into the chamber, and pierced them both, the man of Israel and the woman, through her chamber. So the blow was held back from the children of Israel.Numbers uses the same Hebrew noun מַגֵּפָה (maggephah, “plague”) as Psalm 106:29. Here the plague is stayed after a spear thrust kills a man and a woman; the text places that violence beside the stopping of the outbreak.
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