What Does Psalm 120:4 Mean?
Sharpened arrows of the mighty, with coals of broom.
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
Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.THE KEY
The false tongue faces a force that pierces like arrows and burns like coals.
THE MEANING
The false tongue is answered with sharpened arrows and burning coals. Deceit is not weightless here; the verse gives it a consequence that pierces and keeps burning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a lie is harmless because it is only words: the false tongue is met with the image of piercing and fire.
THE ROOT
שְׁנוּנִים
shenunim
GROWS FROM
שׁנן
shanan
To sharpen or whet.
The word for the arrows’ sharpness grows from the same root as a verb used for teaching diligently. The root joins words honed into weapons with words sharpened through instruction: speech can wound or form.
ALSO GROWS
shanan: To sharpen or whet.
שָׁנַן
This is the root’s basic action, giving the arrows their cutting edge.
veshinnantam: You shall teach them diligently.
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם
In Deuteronomy 6:7, the related verb brings sharpening into the work of teaching words.
THE PATTERN
Deceptive speech is pictured as a weapon that pierces and burns.
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow, and it speaks deceit. One speaks wholeness to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he sets his ambush.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
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.The root behind these sharpened arrows also appears in “teach them diligently.” In this psalm, sharpened speech wounds; in Deuteronomy, it carries instruction.
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