What Does Psalm 106:47 Mean?
Deliver us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the nations, to extend our hands to your set-apart nature, and to shout in your praise.
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
Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise.THE KEY
Deliverance here is not a private escape: it gathers the scattered so they can make God’s nature known in praise.
THE MEANING
The reader is brought out of constriction and gathered back into belonging; scattering is not the final shape. This shared return opens into thanks for God’s set-apart nature and praise that can be voiced together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being scattered means being forgotten, or that deliverance ends with getting out alone: the prayer joins being brought out with being gathered into a shared purpose.
THE ROOT
הוֹשִׁיעֵנוּ
hoshieinu
GROWS FROM
ישע
Deliver, bring out into safety and spaciousness.
“deliver us” in this verse is hoshieinu. The word translated “save” carries the movement of being brought out of constriction into room to live. Its companion in the verse is gathering: deliverance opens the way back into belonging, not just away from danger.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
The same root names the deliverance the prayer asks to experience.
Yeshua: The name Yeshua, associated with deliverance
יֵשׁוּעַ
The name carries the same root’s sense of being brought out.
moshia: Deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This form names the one who brings another out.
וְקַבְּצֵנוּ
veqabbetsenu
GROWS FROM
קבץ
Gather, collect, bring together.
“Gather us” means more than removing people from the nations: it gives the dispersed a shared shape again. The verse’s movement is from being scattered among peoples to belonging together in praise.
ALSO GROWS
yeqabbets: He gathers
יְקַבֵּץ
The same root describes the act of bringing separated people together.
meqabbets: One who gathers
מְקַבֵּץ
This form names the gathering action that the prayer asks to happen to the scattered.
לְהוֹדוֹת
lehodot
GROWS FROM
ידה
Acknowledge, give thanks, praise.
“extend our hands” in this verse is lehodot. Thanks here is an acknowledgment voiced toward God’s name (שֵׁם, shem, name as nature), not only a private feeling. The gathered people become a shared voice that names what God is like.
ALSO GROWS
todah: Thanksgiving, praise
תּוֹדָה
This noun gives thanks the shape of an expressed acknowledgment.
Yehudah: Judah, associated with praise
יְהוּדָה
The name’s biblical wordplay links the person and tribe with praise: “Now will I praise the LORD.”
hodu: Give thanks, praise
הוֹדוּ
This related form makes the act of acknowledgment audible.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance gathers scattered people into belonging, where they can voice praise together.
The Lord GOD, who gathers the driven ones of Israel, says, Yet I will gather others to him, beside those already gathered to him.And not for that nation only, but that he would also gather together into one the children of God who were scattered abroad.But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.THE THREAD
He gathers them in from the lands, from the east and the west, from the north and the south.“Gathered” here comes from קבץ (qavats, gather or collect), the same root as “gather us” in this verse. Psalm 107:3 opens the prayer’s compressed image into a gathering from every horizon.
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