What Does Psalm 107:35 Mean?
He turns the wilderness into a pool of waters, and the thirsting ground into outgoings of waters.
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 turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.THE KEY
God sets barren ground as a pool and dry ground as springs; the landscape itself becomes a place where water gathers and rises.
THE MEANING
The barren place before you is not fixed in barrenness: God sets it as a gathered pool and the dry ground as springs of water. What appears to have no source becomes a place where water comes forth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that a barren place can only remain barren, or that life can come only from ground already rich with it.
THE ROOT
יָשֵׂם
yāśēm
GROWS FROM
שׂים
שׂים (śîm) means to set, put, or place.
The Hebrew verb יָשֵׂם (yāśēm), “he sets,” presents the wilderness as being placed into a new condition. English “turneth” carries the change, while the root also lets you see the deliberate setting: wilderness as a pool, dry ground as springs.
ALSO GROWS
śîm: Set, put, place.
שִׂים
This form shares the root’s consonants and makes the action concrete: the land is set as a pool.
yāśîm: He sets or places.
יָשִׂים
This form keeps the same root consonants and repeats the verse’s active image of setting something into a new condition.
śîm lēv: Set the heart; attend.
שִׂים לֵב
The same verb can describe setting the heart toward something, as the verse describes setting the wilderness into a water-bearing state.
THE PATTERN
Divine restoration makes barren places themselves into sources of gathered and flowing water.
I will open rivers on the bare heights, and eyes of waters in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of waters, and the parched land springs of waters.Then the limping one leaps like a hart, and the tongue of the mute rings out. For waters split open in the wilderness, and streams in the desert plain.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
who turns the rock into a pool of waters, the flint into a spring of waters.Both verses use אֲגַם (ʾăgām), “pool”: here the wilderness becomes a pool, and there the rock does. The repeated image makes the source itself, wilderness or flint, part of the surprise.
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