What Does Psalm 106:6 Mean?
We have missed the mark with our fathers, we have bent crooked, we have made ourselves restless.
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
We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly.THE KEY
The verse’s “we” holds inherited patterns and personal participation in the same confession.
THE MEANING
The verse places the reader inside a shared confession: the pattern received from those before us is named, and the speaker’s own participation is named with it. Missing, crookedness, and wicked action sit side by side, without ancestry becoming an excuse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a family or collective pattern makes my own part invisible: the confession says “we,” bringing inheritance and participation into view.
THE ROOT
חָטָאנוּ
ḥāṭāʾnû
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, go astray, or miss a mark.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ḥāṭāʾnû. The root keeps “sinned” connected to the idea of missing, rather than leaving it as a broad label. Its related forms name both the act and the one who misses, so the verse’s confession is about people and their actions.
ALSO GROWS
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Sin, offense; in some contexts, a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
This noun shares the root חטא and keeps the confessed missing connected to the word used for sin elsewhere in Hebrew.
ḥōṭēʾ: One who sins or misses.
חוֹטֵא
This form shares the root חטא and names the person who acts; the verse’s “we” makes that participation explicit.
הִרְשַׁעְנוּ
hirshaʿnû
GROWS FROM
רשע
To act wickedly or be guilty.
“made ourselves restless” in this verse is hirshaʿnû. The verse names wrongdoing as an action the speaker owns, not only as an abstract condition. A related form also names the wrongdoer, keeping the act and the person connected.
ALSO GROWS
rāšāʿ: A wicked or guilty person.
רָשָׁע
It shares the root רשע and shows how the same root can name the person associated with the wrongdoing confessed here.
rišʿāh: Wickedness or wrongdoing.
רִשְׁעָה
It shares the root רשע and names the wrongdoing itself, linking the verse’s action to the condition it expresses.
THE PATTERN
Confession names wrongdoing plainly and brings the speaker’s participation into view.
We have missed, and have bent ourselves crooked, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by turning aside from your precepts and from your judgments.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
Against you alone have I missed the mark, and done the evil in your eyes, so that you are aligned in your word and clear when you judge.The Hebrew verb translated “sinned” here shares the root חטא with Psalm 106:6. The shared root moves from the collective “we” to the personal “I,” holding communal and individual confession together.
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