What Does Psalm 118:13 Mean?
You thrust, you thrust at me that I might fall, but the LORD helps me.
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
Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall: but the LORD helped me.THE KEY
The Hebrew intensifies the shove, “pushing, you pushed me”, then answers that force with the LORD’s help.
THE MEANING
The shove against you is real and is aimed at your fall. Yet the verse holds the LORD’s help beside that pressure, so the threat is real without becoming the whole truth of your present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The pressure against you means your fall is inevitable. The verse places the LORD’s help in the same moment as the threat.
THE ROOT
דָּחֹה דְחִיתַנִי
dāḥōh dĕḥîtanî
GROWS FROM
דחה
to thrust, push away, or drive away
“you thrust, you thrust” in this verse is dāḥōh dĕḥîtanî. The first phrase uses an infinitive absolute beside the verb, intensifying the shove: the pressure is force aimed at your fall. This root also forms נִדְחֶה, “one driven away,” so the language of thrusting carries the sense of displacement before the verse answers it with help.
ALSO GROWS
dāḥōh: thrusting; an infinitive absolute form
דָּחֹה
Its pairing with the verb intensifies the force of the shove in this verse.
nidḥeh: driven away, rejected
נִדְחֶה
This form shows how the same root can name the state of being pushed aside.
עֲזָרָנִי
ʿăzārānî
GROWS FROM
עזר
to help or aid
“helped me” in this verse is ʿăzārānî. The verse ends with עזר, the same root behind עֵזֶר (“help, helper”) and עֶזְרָה (“assistance”). The word family gathers the ending around aid meeting the threatened fall: the help is the answer the verse sets against the shove.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: help, helper
עֵזֶר
It shows the root naming aid itself and the one who gives it.
ʿezrāh: help, assistance
עֶזְרָה
This related form keeps the verse’s ending grounded in concrete aid.
THE PATTERN
Being pressed toward a fall does not decide the outcome when help meets the pressure.
Though he falls, he will not be hurled down, for the LORD props him up with his hand.Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not look about in dismay, for I am your God. I will grip you, and I will help you, and I will hold you up with the right hand of my alignment.Pursued, but not left behind; thrown down, but not perishing.THE THREAD
Look, God is my help; the Lord is with those who prop up my living soul.Psalm 54:4 calls God עֹזֵר (ʿōzēr, “helper”), from the same root עזר as “helped” here. It opens the final clause as aid standing with someone under pressure, not as an abstract change in mood.
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