What Does Psalm 116:13 Mean?
I lift the cup of deliverances, and in the nature of the LORD I call.
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
I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.THE KEY
The cup is deliverance taken up, and the name called is the LORD’s nature addressed aloud.
THE MEANING
You take up deliverance and call on the LORD by his nature, not by a bare label. Receiving and calling meet in the present: deliverance is something you take up, and your voice turns toward the LORD.
THE ROOT
יְשׁוּעוֹת
yeshuot
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
Deliverance that brings someone out of constriction and into room.
The Hebrew word is plural: the cup holds deliverances, not merely an abstract promise of rescue. Its root also carries the movement from narrowness into room, so taking this cup is receiving a way out of constriction.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: to deliver, rescue
יָשַׁע
The verb shows that the cup’s deliverance is an active bringing out.
yeshuah: deliverance, rescue
יְשׁוּעָה
This singular form makes the same root’s movement into a named gift.
moshia: one who delivers
מוֹשִׁיעַ
The branch names the deliverer behind the deliverance being taken up.
אֶקְרָא
ʾeqra
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
to call out, summon, or proclaim.
The call is voiced and directed; it is more than holding a thought inwardly. The same root can describe reading aloud, so calling on the LORD’s name joins voice with address.
ALSO GROWS
qeri'ah: a calling or reading
קְרִיאָה
This branch keeps the spoken act of calling audible in the verse.
miqra: a reading or convocation
מִקְרָא
A reading or gathering carries the root’s sense of calling something into the open.
THE PATTERN
The voiced call on the LORD’s name is where distress meets deliverance.
This bowed one cries out, and the LORD hears him, and brings him out of all his narrow places.And it will be that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will slip free, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors whom the LORD calls.For everyone who calls upon the nature of the LORD will be delivered.THE THREAD
And in the nature of the LORD I call; O LORD, please, let my living soul slip free.The word translated “called” comes from the same Hebrew root, קרא (qara), meaning to call out or proclaim. Here the earlier cry for deliverance meets the later act of taking up the cup.
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