What Does Psalm 119:156 Mean?
Great are your compassions, LORD; bring me to life according to your judgments.
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
Great are thy tender mercies, O LORD: quicken me according to thy judgments.THE KEY
The plea for life rises from abundant compassion and rests within the order of God’s judgments.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s compassion is abundant now, and your life is held within it. You can ask to be made alive according to the judgments that give shape to what is right.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This dissolves the belief that compassion has run thin: the verse calls the LORD’s compassions great even as it asks for renewed life.
THE ROOT
רַחֲמֶיךָ
raḥamekha
GROWS FROM
ר-ח-ם
r-ḥ-m
To show compassion; this root also forms the word for womb.
The word translated “tender mercies” names compassion as deep, sheltering care. Its root also forms רֶחֶם (rechem, “womb”), bringing a bodily image of life-bearing tenderness into the plea for renewed life.
ALSO GROWS
rechem: Womb
רֶחֶם
The shared root gives compassion a sheltering, life-bearing resonance.
raḥum: Compassionate
רַחוּם
This describes the compassionate nature that the verse calls abundant.
חַיֵּנִי
chayyeni
GROWS FROM
ח-י-ה
ḥ-y-h
To live, be alive, or bring to life.
“Quicken” here means to make alive again, not simply to make something faster. The same root names life itself, so the plea is for life to rise within the speaker again.
ALSO GROWS
chayyim: Life
חַיִּים
The same root links the request to be quickened with life itself.
chayah: To live or be alive
חָיָה
This verb carries the same movement from lifelessness into life.
מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ
mishpateykha
GROWS FROM
ש-פ-ט
sh-p-ṭ
To judge, decide, or govern.
The speaker asks for life according to God’s judgments, placing renewal within divine justice and order. Compassion and judgment appear together as part of the same ground for life.
ALSO GROWS
shafat: To judge or decide
שָׁפַט
The verb shows the action beneath the judgments named in the verse.
shofet: Judge
שֹׁפֵט
The judge is the one who exercises the discernment and ordering expressed by mishpat.
THE PATTERN
Compassion meets vulnerability as a sustaining and restoring presence.
It is by the faithful love of the LORD that we are not used up, for his compassions do not run out.As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those in awe of him.And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before his face.The Hebrew word translated “revive” in Hosea is יְחַיֵּנוּ (yechayyenu, “he will make us live”), from the same ח-י-ה (ḥ-y-h, “live”) root as “quicken” here. Hosea makes the shared root plain: to be quickened is to live again.
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