What Does Psalm 109:14 Mean?
Let the crookedness of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and let the falling short of his mother not be wiped away.
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 the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.THE KEY
This verse makes remembrance the opposite of erasure: a father’s crookedness stays in the LORD’s memory while a mother’s sin is not wiped away.
THE MEANING
The speaker asks the LORD to keep a father’s wrongdoing in remembrance and to leave a mother’s sin unerased. The plea carries the severity of a curse: both parents’ wrongs are brought before the LORD and denied erasure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a family’s wrongdoing simply disappears with the people who committed it; the prayer asks that its record persist before the LORD.
THE ROOT
יִזָּכֵר
yizzākhēr
GROWS FROM
זכר
זכר (z-k-r; zākhar): remember, call to mind, mention.
English “remembered” can sound like a thought that comes and goes. The Hebrew זכר family also includes words for memorials, so the plea asks that the fathers’ wrongdoing remain present before the LORD as a matter not passed over.
ALSO GROWS
zāḵar: remember, call to mind
זָכַר
This verb supplies the action requested in the verse: the fathers’ wrongdoing is brought to remembrance before the LORD.
zikkārōn: remembrance, memorial
זִכָּרוֹן
A memorial is something kept in view, giving “remembered” the force of an enduring presence rather than a passing thought.
ʾāzkārāh: memorial portion of an offering
אָזְכָּרָה
This related word shows remembrance taking a concrete, commemorative form in biblical language.
חַטָּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
חטא (ḥ-ṭ-ʾ; ḥāṭāʾ): miss, go wrong, incur fault.
“falling short” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾt. The Hebrew word for the mother’s sin belongs to a family that includes the act of missing and the person who misses. The same noun can also name a purification offering elsewhere, so the word carries a connection between the wrong and what is brought in response to it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: miss, go wrong, sin
חָטָא
The verb names the action behind the mother’s חַטָּאת: a failure or wrong that is being held in view.
ḥōṭēʾ: one who sins or goes wrong
חוֹטֵא
This form names the person by the same root action, linking the wrong in the verse to the one who commits it.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: sin; also a purification offering
חַטָּאת
The very noun used for the mother’s sin can elsewhere name a purification offering, joining the language of wrong with the language of response to wrong.
תִּמָּח
timmāḥ
GROWS FROM
מחה
מחה (m-ḥ-h; māḥāh): wipe, rub away, erase.
“wiped away” in this verse is timmāḥ. English “blotted out” retains an image of writing, while the Hebrew verb means to wipe or erase. Set beside זכר, it makes the verse’s two lines a direct opposition between keeping wrong in remembrance and not removing it.
ALSO GROWS
māḥāh: wipe away, erase
מָחָה
This is the active verb behind the verse’s image of a sin being wiped from view.
nimḥāh: be wiped away, be erased
נִמְחָה
This passive form echoes the verse’s request that the mother’s sin not undergo erasure.
THE PATTERN
Scripture speaks of wrongdoing as something either held in remembrance before God or blotted from the record.
I, even I, I AM, the one who wipes away your rebellion for my own sake, and I will not remember your missed marks.And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and his brother, saying, Perceive the LORD, for they shall all perceive me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will release their crookedness, and their shortcomings I will remember no more.Turn around, then, and turn back, so that your shortcomings may be wiped away, and the times of breathing again may come from the face of the LORD.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcomings are covered.The Hebrew חֲטָאָה (ḥaṭāʾāh, “sin”) here belongs to the same חטא root as the mother’s חַטָּאת. Psalm 32:1 places that same wrong under a covering, revealing the tension between this plea that it remain and another verse’s image of it covered.
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