What Does Psalm 119:9 Mean?
How does a young man cleanse his way? By guarding it according to your word.
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
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.THE KEY
The verse makes cleansing an act of keeping watch: the path clears as it is guarded by the word.
THE MEANING
Your way becomes clear as you keep watch over it according to God’s word. The verse joins a clean path with attentive keeping in the present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that a clean way is simply whatever feels right: the measure named here is God’s word.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁמֹר
lishmor
GROWS FROM
שמר
To keep, guard, or watch over.
“Taking heed” is literally keeping or guarding. The same root names a watcher and a guarded charge, so the verse pictures attention as keeping the way under watch according to the word.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: keeper, watcher
שֹׁמֵר
The keeper stays alert to what is entrusted; here, the way is held in view according to the word.
mishmeret: guard, charge, watch
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch makes the sense of an entrusted thing kept under guard explicit.
יְזַכֶּה
yizkeh
GROWS FROM
זכה
To be clean, clear, or pure.
“cleanse” in this verse is yizkeh. The root reaches beyond washing to the condition of being clear or pure. Joined to shamar, it shows a way becoming clear as it is kept under the word’s direction.
ALSO GROWS
zakh: pure, clear
זַךְ
This adjective carries the same root’s sense of clarity into the description of what is pure.
hizzakkû: make yourselves clean (Isaiah 1:16)
הִזַּכּוּ
The same root appears in a direct call to become clean, echoing the cleansing named in this verse.
THE PATTERN
God’s word gives direction that keeps a person’s way clear.
I store your word in my heart, so that I do not miss the mark against you.For the command is a lamp, and the instruction is light, and the reproofs that straighten are the way of life.That he might set her apart, cleansing her with the bath of water by the word.THE THREAD
The LORD watches over you from all harm; he watches over your living soul.The Hebrew root שמר, “keep” or “guard,” appears in both verses: here it is rendered “taking heed,” while Psalm 121 renders it “preserve.” The same keeping that describes your watch over the way also describes the LORD’s keeping of you.
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