What Does Psalm 107:10 Mean?
Those who sit in darkness and in the valley of deepest darkness, bound and bowed low in iron.
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
Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron;THE KEY
Here darkness is a prison: affliction and iron hold the person fast.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you where darkness feels like a place you sit, while distress and pressure hold with ironlike force. It names that experience as captivity, giving weight to suffering that is real and binding.
THE ROOT
אֲסִירֵי
ʾasîrê
GROWS FROM
אסר
ʾ-s-r
To bind, tie up, or imprison.
“bound” in this verse is ʾasîrê. The Hebrew word pictures people as prisoners, from the root meaning to bind. Alongside affliction and iron, it presents darkness as a condition that holds a person fast.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsîr: A person held in captivity.
אָסִיר
This noun belongs to the same bind-root as the word translated “bound.”
ʾāsar: To tie or hold someone in restraint.
אָסַר
The verb makes the verse’s image concrete: the affliction and iron function as bonds.
חֹשֶׁךְ
ḥōšeḵ
GROWS FROM
חשך
ḥ-š-k
To be dark; in related forms, to darken or withhold.
The root connects darkness with what is withheld or kept back. Beside the bonds in this verse, that shades the image as a life where light and freedom are both held out of reach.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōšeḵ: Darkness, obscurity.
חֹשֶׁךְ
This is the state the verse says the captives inhabit.
ḥāśaḵ: To restrain or hold something back.
חָשַׂךְ
The related form links darkness with deprivation: what is hidden or withheld cannot be reached.
עֳנִי
ʿŏnî
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿ-n-h
To afflict, humble, or bring low.
“bowed low” in this verse is ʿŏnî. This root gives affliction the sense of being pressed down or brought low. Together with the bind-root, it shows suffering here as both weight and restraint.
ALSO GROWS
ʿānî: One who is lowly or in hardship.
עָנִי
This related word carries the same sense of being brought low.
ʿinnāh: To press down or humble.
עִנָּה
This verbal form shows affliction as an action that bears down on a person.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents darkness and bondage as conditions from which people can be brought out into light and freedom.
To open blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the prison, and those who settle in darkness out of the prison house.He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.The people who sat in darkness saw a great light, and for those who sat in the land of deepest darkness, a light rose up on them.THE THREAD
He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.The word אֲסִירֵי (asirei), “prisoners,” in this verse comes from אסר (ʾ-s-r), “to bind”; verse 14 uses מוֹסְרֹתֵיהֶם (moseroteihem), “their bands,” from that same root. The next verse shows the bonds being broken and the captives brought out of the darkness named here.
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