What Does Psalm 107:14 Mean?
He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.
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 brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.THE KEY
Here freedom has two movements at once: a way out of deepest darkness and the tearing loose of the bonds.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now as a complete release: the reader is brought out from deepest darkness, and what binds is severed. The way forward opens as both obscurity and restraint lose their hold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that darkness and bondage are permanent conditions of the self: the verse presents both as conditions that can be exited and severed.
THE ROOT
יְנַתֵּק
yenatteq
GROWS FROM
נתק
to tear off, pull loose, or sever
“tears apart” in this verse is yenatteq. The verb carries the sense of tearing something away from what holds it. Release here reaches the restraint itself: the bond loses its hold.
ALSO GROWS
vayenatteq: A form of the same verb used when Samson snaps the cords binding him (Judges 16:9).
וַיְנַתֵּק
The shared verb makes the breaking of the bands a concrete tearing free.
nittaqti: A form of the same verb used for breaking a yoke and its bonds (Jeremiah 2:20).
נִתַּקְתִּי
The root links freedom with severing the restraint that holds someone down.
חֹשֶׁךְ
choshekh
GROWS FROM
חשך
to be dark; the same consonantal root also carries the sense of withholding
The root can name darkness and withholding, joining obscurity with what is held back. The verse presents darkness as a condition the reader is brought out from, not a permanent identity.
ALSO GROWS
chashakh: The verb form for becoming or being dark.
חָשַׁךְ
It shows darkness as a condition that can hold sway and then be left behind.
chasakhta: A form used for withholding or sparing, as in Genesis 22:12.
חָשַׂכְתָּ
The shared consonants connect darkness with withholding, giving the movement out of darkness the shade of emerging from what is held back.
הוֹצִיאֵם
hotsi'em
GROWS FROM
יצא
to go out, leave, or emerge
“brings them out” in this verse is hotsi'em. The verb is a causative form of יָצָא (yatsa, “go out”): someone is made to pass outward from the place holding them. The root gives release a direction, outward, into open space.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: The basic verb for leaving or emerging from a place.
יָצָא
It reveals the exit contained in “brought them out.”
motsa: A noun from the same root for an emergence or going forth.
מוֹצָא
This branch echoes the verse’s release as passage into openness.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance brings the constrained out into freedom and breaks the restraints that held them.
Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the loads of the Egyptians, and I will snatch you from their service, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.To open blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the prison, and those who settle in darkness out of the prison house.And behold, the messenger of the LORD stood over him, and a light shone in the prison, and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, "Stand up quickly." And his chains fell away from his hands.THE THREAD
Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the loads of the Egyptians, and I will snatch you from their service, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.Both verses use הוֹצִיא / וְהוֹצֵאתִי (hotsi / vehotse’ti, “bring out”), causative forms of יצא (yatsa, “go out”). Exodus names burdens and bondage; Psalm 107:14 brings the same exit into deepest darkness and follows it with the severing of bonds.
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