What Does Psalm 119:13 Mean?
With my lips I recount all the judgments of your mouth.
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
With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth.THE KEY
The word translated “declared” also means “recounted” and is rooted in the word for counting: the lips give each judgment its telling.
THE MEANING
What comes from God’s mouth is recounted through the reader’s own lips. The verse presents this as careful telling: each judgment is given voice, so what gives shape to right order is not left silent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that what comes from God’s mouth remains distant or silent; it can be carried forward in the reader’s speech.
THE ROOT
סִפַּרְתִּי
sipparti
GROWS FROM
ספר
to count, recount, tell
“recount” in this verse is sipparti. The Hebrew word סִפַּרְתִּי (sipparti, “I recounted”) carries the sense of telling and counting in the same root. The speaker’s lips do more than make a statement: they give the judgments an ordered, remembered telling.
ALSO GROWS
sefer: A written record or book.
סֵפֶר
A telling can also be preserved as a record, linking spoken recounting with what is kept and remembered.
mispar: A number or count.
מִסְפָּר
The same root can mark how many things there are, revealing the counting beneath the verse’s act of recounting.
מִשְׁפְּטֵי
mishpetei
GROWS FROM
שפט
to judge, decide, govern
The judgments are decisions that give shape to right order, not merely opinions. Joined to “thy mouth,” they arrive as words that can be spoken and carried forward.
ALSO GROWS
shofet: A judge, one who makes or delivers a judgment.
שֹׁפֵט
This branch shows the human agent connected to the act of judging named in the verse.
mishpat: A judgment, ruling, or just order.
מִשְׁפָּט
The verse’s “judgments” belong to this family of decisions that establish what is right.
THE PATTERN
Words received from God become spoken words carried forward through human lips.
And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.My mouth recounts your alignment and your deliverance all the day, for I do not know their count.Through him, then, let us always carry up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.THE THREAD
My mouth recounts your alignment and your deliverance all the day, for I do not know their count.Psalm 71:15 uses the same root ספר (s-f-r; safar, “to count or recount”) for the mouth’s telling and for the “numbers” the speaker cannot know. The judgments in Psalm 119:13 can be recounted, while the full count of what God does remains beyond the speaker’s grasp.
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