What Does Psalm 106:46 Mean?
He gave them compassions before all those who took them captive.
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 made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives.THE KEY
The verse says captivity cannot keep compassion from crossing the line between captive and captor.
THE MEANING
Even when you are held inside a situation you cannot undo, compassion is not locked outside it: the LORD can turn the gaze of people with power over you toward mercy. Someone who seems able only to confine you can become a witness to your vulnerability.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that power over you makes compassion impossible.
THE ROOT
לְרַחֲמִים
le-raḥamim
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ם
R-Ḥ-M
To show tender compassion.
The word rendered “pitied” means “to compassion”: the verse says God gives the captives into compassion before their captors. The same word family includes רֶחֶם (reḥem), “womb,” linking compassion with the tenderness that holds vulnerable life.
ALSO GROWS
reḥem: Womb
רֶחֶם
The shared root joins compassion with a place where vulnerable life is held and protected.
riḥēm: To show compassion
רִחֵם
This verb names the compassionate response the verse says appears before the captors.
raḥum: Compassionate
רַחוּם
This form describes compassion as a quality, showing the root can name both the response and the character behind it.
וַיִּתֵּן
wayyitten
GROWS FROM
נ־ת־ן
N-T-N
To give, set, or place.
The Hebrew verb says God “gave” them to compassion, which the KJV renders “made them … to be pitied.” The wording presents compassion as something placed into the captives’ relationship with their captors.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place
נָתַן
This is the verb behind “made,” making the act one of giving the captives into compassion.
mattanah: Gift
מַתָּנָה
This related word carries the same root of giving, illuminating compassion as something granted rather than possessed by the captors alone.
THE PATTERN
The LORD can place compassion where power might otherwise keep the vulnerable at a distance.
and release your people who have missed the mark against you, and all their rebellions in which they have broken away from you, and give them compassion before those who carried them captive, so that they may have compassion on them.Now God placed Daniel into faithful love and compassion before the face of the master of the eunuchs.And he took them in that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was immersed, he and all his, at once.THE THREAD
Then the LORD your God will turn back your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will turn back and gather you from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you.“Have compassion” there comes from the same ר־ח־ם root as “pitied” here. Psalm 106:46 shows compassion reaching the captors’ gaze; Deuteronomy 30:3 joins that same compassion to the gathering of the scattered.
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