What Does Psalm 109:12 Mean?
Let there be none to draw out faithful love toward him, and let there be none to bend toward his fatherless children.
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
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.THE KEY
The curse does more than deny mercy: it imagines faithful love never being drawn out for the man, then denies favor even to his fatherless children.
THE MEANING
This verse lays a wish bare: that no one extends faithful love toward him and no one shows favor to his fatherless children. Its force is immediate because the deprivation reaches the children as well as its named target.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a curse aimed at one person stays with that person: this one names his fatherless children as recipients of the same abandonment.
THE ROOT
מֹשֵׁךְ
moshekh
GROWS FROM
משך
mashakh
Draw, pull, extend, or prolong.
“draw out” in this verse is moshekh. English makes “extend” sound like a neutral gesture, but מָשַׁךְ (mashakh, to draw or prolong) pictures care being drawn out across time. Here that reaching is wished away; the paired word חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love) makes the withheld thing relational loyalty, not a passing feeling.
ALSO GROWS
mishkhu: Draw out; pull.
מִשְׁכוּ
This form makes the root’s sense of drawing something outward concrete, echoing the care the verse wishes no one would extend.
hamshekh: Continue; draw out or prolong.
הַמְשֵׁךְ
This form appears with faithful love in Psalm 36:10, where it is asked to continue; here the same reaching is wished away.
חֶסֶד
chesed
GROWS FROM
חסד
chasad
Faithful love; loyal care.
The word translated “mercy” carries the sense of faithful love, a durable loyalty that keeps reaching toward someone. The verse’s cruelty lies in asking that this loyal care have no one to carry it to him.
ALSO GROWS
chasad: Act loyally; show faithful love.
חָסַד
The verb form shows that this love is enacted, not merely felt; the verse wishes away anyone who would enact it toward him.
chasid: A faithful or devoted person.
חָסִיד
This related word describes someone marked by loyalty, bringing the relational quality of the withheld care into focus.
חֹנֵן
chonen
GROWS FROM
חנן
chanan
Show favor; deal graciously.
“bend toward” in this verse is chonen. The second clause does not merely repeat the first: it names favor as something a person actively shows to the children. Alongside the first clause, the verse strips away both sustained loyalty and active favor.
ALSO GROWS
chen: Favor; acceptance.
חֵן
This noun names the favor the verse wishes no one would show to the fatherless children.
chanun: Gracious; one who shows favor.
חַנּוּן
This related form makes favor a quality expressed toward others, sharpening the force of the verse’s wish that no one express it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places the fatherless within the reach of protection, so a wish to cut off that care exposes the violence of the wish.
He executes judgment for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him bread and a cloak.You see it, for you gaze at toil and grief, to place it in your hand. The weakened leaves himself to you; you have been the helper of the fatherless.Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
Draw out your faithful love to those who perceive you, and your alignment to those straight in heart.Both verses use מָשַׁךְ (mashakh, draw out or prolong) alongside חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love). Psalm 36 asks for that love to be drawn out; Psalm 109 imagines its extension cut off, even from fatherless children.
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