What Does Psalm 118:5 Mean?
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.
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 called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.THE KEY
The answer is pictured as an expanse: the cry comes from constriction, while the response opens into room.
THE MEANING
The cry rises inside constriction, but the response opens into space. The verse holds the call and the answer together, so distress is a real place of experience without being the limit of what can be experienced.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that narrowness is permanent or total; the verse gives the answer a spacious setting.
THE ROOT
מֶרְחָב
merḥav
GROWS FROM
רחב
To be wide; to become spacious.
“answers me in a wide place” in this verse is merḥav. The word translated “large place” is מֶרְחָב (merḥav), from רחב (raḥav, to be wide). Its branches tie the answer to expanded room: the response is pictured as more than a reply; it opens space around the caller.
ALSO GROWS
raḥav: Wide, broad.
רָחָב
This adjective names the quality contained in the large place: breadth replaces constriction.
hirḥiv: To widen, enlarge.
הִרְחִיב
This causative form shows the root as an opening or widening, illuminating the spaciousness of the answer.
THE PATTERN
A cry from constriction is answered by widening the space in which life can unfold.
To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm of David. Answer me when I call, O God of my alignment. In the narrow place you widen me. Bend toward me, and hear and respond to my prayer.He brings me out into a broad place; he pulls me loose, because he delights in me.O Corinthians, our mouth is open toward you, our heart is widened.THE THREAD
To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm of David. Answer me when I call, O God of my alignment. In the narrow place you widen me. Bend toward me, and hear and respond to my prayer.Psalm 4 uses the same root רחב (raḥav, to be wide) in “thou hast enlarged me.” It places that widening beside distress, opening Psalm 118’s large place as an answer that makes room where constriction had been.
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