What Does Psalm 107:42 Mean?
The straight ones see it and rejoice, and all crookedness shuts its mouth.
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
The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth.THE KEY
Once the upright see what the LORD has done, crooked injustice loses the power to speak as though it were final.
THE MEANING
When the LORD’s work of lifting the lowly comes into view for you, you recognize it and rejoice. The crookedness that seems able to define what is true is made to close its mouth; it does not have the final word.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that injustice gets the final word simply because it can speak with force: here, wrongness itself is silenced.
THE ROOT
עַוְלָה
ʿavlāh
GROWS FROM
עול
To act unjustly; wrongness or injustice.
“crookedness” in this verse is ʿavlāh. The word translated “iniquity” is עַוְלָה (ʿavlāh, injustice or wrong), from עול (ʿ-w-l, to act unjustly). The verse gives that wrong a mouth, then says it closes: injustice is present, but it does not get the last word.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāwel: Wrongdoing; injustice.
עָוֶל
This related form keeps the focus on injustice as something that can be exposed and judged.
ʿāwēl: One who acts unjustly.
עָוֵל
The same root can name both injustice and the one who embodies it, linking the wrong to its source.
יְשָׁרִים
yesharim
GROWS FROM
ישר
Straight, level; upright.
“straight ones” in this verse is yesharim. Here, “righteous” carries the concrete image of the upright ones, from ישר (y-sh-r, straight or upright). Their clear sight and joy stand beside the silencing of עַוְלָה (ʿavlāh, injustice), as though what is crooked can no longer pass itself off as straight.
ALSO GROWS
yōsher: Straightness; integrity.
יֹשֶׁר
It shows the root describing a quality of alignment, not only a label for a person.
meysharim: Equity; what is level or right.
מֵישָׁרִים
This branch makes the root’s image of straightness visible in fair judgment.
THE PATTERN
When God’s good work becomes visible, those who recognize it rejoice and opposition loses its voice.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with a ringing cry. Then they said among the nations, The LORD has grown great in doing with these.And as he said these things, all who lay against him were put to shame, and all the crowd rejoiced over all the weighty things done by him.For so is the will of God, that by doing good you may muzzle the ignorance of the mindless.THE THREAD
Light is sown for the aligned, and gladness for the straight in heart.Psalm 97:11 pairs the same root י־ש־ר (y-sh-r, straight or upright) in “upright in heart” with שִׂמְחָה (simḥah, gladness), from שׂ־מ־ח (ś-m-ḥ, to be glad or rejoice), the root behind “rejoice” here. Together, the verses link uprightness with joy.
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