What Does Psalm 106:31 Mean?
And it was counted to him for alignment, for generation and generation, to the ages.
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
And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore.THE KEY
The verse says Phinehas’s killing is entered as alignment, and that reckoning is carried across generations.
THE MEANING
The verse sets before you a stark accounting: Phinehas’s killing is counted as alignment. That judgment reaches generation after generation, preserving the text’s naming of violence as righteousness in the inherited story.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Righteousness always describes harmless conduct; here the text explicitly counts a killing as righteousness.
THE ROOT
וַתֵּחָשֶׁב
vatteḥāšēv
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-š-b
To think, devise, reckon, or account; here, “and it was reckoned.”
This root holds thought and accounting together: “counted” is an act of appraisal that assigns the deed a place. The same root frames Abram’s trust as reckoned righteousness in Genesis 15:6.
ALSO GROWS
machashavah: Thought, plan
מַחֲשָׁבָה
The root can describe what is formed in thought as well as what is entered into an account, giving “counted” the sense of considered appraisal.
cheshbon: Account, calculation
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
This branch makes the accounting sense concrete: the deed is entered as alignment.
לִצְדָקָה
litsedaqah
GROWS FROM
צדק
ṣ-d-q
Rightness, justice, alignment; here, “as righteousness.”
English can make “righteousness” sound like a moral score someone possesses; this root also carries rightness, justice, and alignment. The verse joins that claim about right order to an act of reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness
צֶדֶק
It shows that righteousness here belongs to a wider language of what is right or just.
tsaddiq: A just or righteous person
צַדִּיק
This branch names the person in terms of the same root’s rightness, echoing the verse’s reckoning of the deed to Phinehas.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly describes a response as righteousness by reckoning it so, preserving that accounting as a witness.
And he leaned his weight on the LORD, and he counted it to him as alignment.For what does the scripture say? Abraham leaned his full weight on God, and it was counted to him for alignment.And the writing was filled, which says, Abraham leaned his full weight on God, and it was counted to him as alignment, and he was called the friend of God.THE THREAD
And he leaned his weight on the LORD, and he counted it to him as alignment.Both verses use the Hebrew root חשב (ḥashav, reckon) with צדקה (tsedaqah, righteousness). The same reckoning formula is attached to Abram’s trust there and Phinehas’s killing here, bringing two sharply different acts under the same words.
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