What Does Psalm 106:35 Mean?
But they interwove among the nations, and trained in their works.
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
But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works.THE KEY
The people and practices you join become your teachers; participation is already education.
THE MEANING
What you repeatedly enter teaches you now: shared practices can move from the people around you into your own habits. The verse shows belonging as formative, because the works you take part in also school you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you can share in a community’s practices without being shaped by them.
THE ROOT
וַיִּלְמְדוּ
wayyilmĕḏû
GROWS FROM
למד
L-M-D
To learn or be trained; in the intensive stem, to teach or instruct.
“trained” in this verse is wayyilmĕḏû. The Hebrew root holds learning and teaching together: the learner is being formed by what instructs them. Here, mingling is followed by learning their works, the shared life itself becomes a teacher.
ALSO GROWS
limmed: Taught or instructed; the intensive form of the same root.
לִמֵּד
The same root that names learning can name teaching, revealing how a surrounding practice instructs through participation.
limmud: One who is taught or trained.
לִמּוּד
This branch carries learning into a formed person, showing that instruction leaves a shape behind.
THE PATTERN
What you repeatedly join teaches and shapes you.
The one who walks with the wise becomes wise; the one who grazes beside the dull is broken.Do not wander; bad company rots good habits.Do not take the shape of this age, but be reshaped by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test what is the good, well-pleasing, and complete will of God.THE THREAD
It is good for me that I am bowed low, so that I may learn your statutes.Both verses use למד (lamad), “learn.” Psalm 106:35 shows participation teaching the people the surrounding works; Psalm 119:71 turns the same learning toward instruction that gives a different shape.
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