What Does Psalm 107:39 Mean?
They are made few and bowed down by the narrowing of harm, and by sorrow.
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
Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.THE KEY
The Hebrew frames oppression as restraint: pressure makes life smaller, then bends it downward.
THE MEANING
When oppression, affliction, and sorrow press upon you, they can diminish your strength and bring you low; the verse names that cost plainly. It locates the lowering in what bears upon you, without making your diminished state your identity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being brought low does not prove you are weak at your core; the verse names oppression, affliction, and sorrow as the pressures that diminish you.
THE ROOT
עֹצֶר
ʿotser
GROWS FROM
עצר
ʿatsar
To restrain, stop, or shut in.
“narrowing” in this verse is ʿotser. The word עֹצֶר (ʿotser), meaning restraint or constraint, carries the sense of being held in. The verse presents oppression as pressure that confines, helping explain how it can make a person smaller and bow them down.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāṣar: To restrain, stop, or hold back.
עָצַר
This verb makes the confining force in oppression visible: something is being held back.
maʿatsar: Restraint or prison.
מַעְצָר
The branch names confinement directly, sharpening the image of oppression as being shut in.
וַיִּמְעֲטוּ
vayyimʿatu
GROWS FROM
מעט
maʿat
To become few, little, or diminished.
“made few” in this verse is vayyimʿatu. The Hebrew verb מָעַט (maʿat), meaning to become few or diminish, describes a loss of measure. Beside the next verb, it shows the pressure shrinking a person before the image turns to being brought low.
ALSO GROWS
maʿat: To become few or diminish.
מָעַט
This is the root verb behind the verse’s image of being reduced.
meʿat: A little; few.
מְעַט
This form carries the same smallness into a description of reduced amount or number.
THE PATTERN
Constriction can diminish and bow a person, while release lifts the burdened and restores room to live.
And he sets the poor on high, out of being bowed low, and makes their families like a flock.Who makes judgment for the pressed, who gives bread to the hungry. The LORD loosens the bound.Come to me, all you who toil and have been loaded down, and I will give you rest.THE THREAD
He was taken from confinement and from judgment. Who shall speak of his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living, struck for the rebellion of my people.Psalm 107’s עֹצֶר (ʿotser), meaning restraint or constraint, appears in Isaiah 53:8 where the KJV says “prison.” The shared word opens both verses through the image of confinement: pressure shuts in, and here someone is taken from it.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us