What Does Psalm 107:38 Mean?
He blesses them, and they multiply greatly; and he does not let their cattle grow few.
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 blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.THE KEY
The verse’s hidden hinge is that blessing means both life multiplying and what sustains it being kept from decrease.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of your life as a place where blessing includes increase and protection from diminishment. Its image holds flourishing and preservation together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that blessing only adds more while leaving what already exists exposed to loss is undone here: blessing also restrains decrease.
THE ROOT
וַיְבָרְכֵם
vayevarkhem
GROWS FROM
ב־ר־ך
b-r-k
To bless.
“blesses” in this verse is vayevarkhem. The verse ties blessing to visible conditions: the people become many, and their livestock do not dwindle. The same consonants also appear in berekh (בֶּרֶךְ, knee), giving blessing a bodily echo of bending as its effects take shape in flourishing life.
ALSO GROWS
berakhah: blessing
בְּרָכָה
This noun carries the same BRK root: the blessing enacted in the verse is also named as a force that brings flourishing.
berekh: knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The same consonants name the knee, a concrete echo that brings a bodily dimension to the word for blessing.
THE PATTERN
Divine blessing is disclosed both in multiplication and in preservation from diminishment.
And God blessed them, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain, your wine, and your oil, the young of your herd and the flocks of your sheep, in the land he swore to your fathers to give you.And he commanded the crowds to recline upon the grass, and he took the five loaves and the two fish, lifted his eyes to the heavens, blessed them, broke the loaves, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the crowds.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."Both verses use barak (בָּרַךְ, bless) and rabah (רָבָה, increase, become many). The psalm’s increase of people and preserved livestock echoes the creation blessing over living creatures: multiplication is part of blessing’s shape.
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