What Does Psalm 119:155 Mean?
Deliverance is far from the wicked, for they do not seek your statutes.
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
Salvation is far from the wicked: for they seek not thy statutes.THE KEY
Deliverance is far not by chance: the verse places its distance where the seeking of God’s instruction is absent.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now: deliverance stands far from the wicked, whose relation to God’s statutes is marked by not seeking them. It holds distance and cause together, linking deliverance to an active seeking of instruction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that deliverance is detached from seeking God’s instruction.
THE ROOT
יְשׁוּעָה
yeshuʿah
GROWS FROM
ישע
yashaʿ
Deliver, rescue; bring out of constraint into room.
Yeshuʿah carries the movement of being brought out of constraint. Its root also forms the verb for delivering and the word for a deliverer, so the verse speaks of a living act of deliverance, not just a distant label.
ALSO GROWS
yashaʿ: Deliver, rescue
יָשַׁע
The verb makes the movement within the noun visible: deliverance is being brought out.
moshiaʿ: Deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
The same root names the one who brings a person out, connecting deliverance with the one who acts to deliver.
דָּרְשׁוּ
darshu
GROWS FROM
דרש
darash
Seek, inquire, pursue.
Darash can mean to seek by inquiry, not merely to glance around. The verse names this active seeking as what is absent, joining the distance of deliverance to a refusal to inquire into God’s instruction.
ALSO GROWS
doresh: One who seeks or inquires
דֹּרֵשׁ
The seeker is described by the same root whose action the verse says is missing.
midrash: Interpretive study
מִדְרָשׁ
This branch carries seeking into sustained study, showing the depth of inquiry the root can hold.
חֻקֶּיךָ
chuqqekha
GROWS FROM
חקק
chaqaq
Engrave, inscribe, decree.
The word for statutes grows from a root associated with engraving and setting something down as a decree. The verse connects deliverance with seeking this marked-out instruction; its distance appears alongside the refusal to seek it.
ALSO GROWS
choq: Statute, decree
חֹק
This related word shows the instruction as something established and set down.
mechoqeq: Lawgiver, one who decrees
מְחֹקֵק
The same root can name the one who sets down the decree, linking the instruction to its source.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly links seeking God with finding nearness, provision, and an opened way.
The young lions go lacking and go hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.Seek the LORD while he may be found, call out to him while he is near.Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.THE THREAD
I am yours; deliver me, for I seek your precepts.The paired roots are יָשַׁע (yashaʿ, deliver) and דָּרַשׁ (darash, seek). Here the speaker asks to be delivered and says, “I have sought”; verse 155 names the distance where that seeking is absent.
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