What Does Psalm 122:3 Mean?
Jerusalem is built as a city bound together.
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
Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:THE KEY
Jerusalem is pictured as whole because its parts are joined, and the word for “compact together” also grows into the word for a companion.
THE MEANING
This verse shows you wholeness taking the form of connection: Jerusalem is one city because its parts are joined. The Hebrew word behind “compact together” also gives words for companion and connection, so the city’s unity is relational as well as structural. The city’s name carries a resonance of wholeness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Wholeness requires being self-contained; this city is whole through its joined parts.
THE ROOT
חֻבְּרָה
chubberah
GROWS FROM
חבר
to join, bind, or associate
“bound together” in this verse is chubberah. The word translated “compact together” comes from the same root as words for a companion and a connection. The city’s unity is not mere closeness: its parts are bound into relationship.
ALSO GROWS
chaver: companion, associate
חָבֵר
This branch makes the city’s joinedness relational: its parts are companions within one whole.
chibbur: connection, joining
חִבּוּר
This branch names the joining itself, showing how separate parts become a connected whole.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
to be whole or complete
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The city’s name carries the resonance of wholeness, which the verse makes visible through joined parts. Its unity is not abstract: it takes shape as a city held together.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried in the city’s name resonance and pictured in its joined parts.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch names completeness, which the city expresses through parts joined into one.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling of wholeness takes shape as many parts are joined into one.
And you shall make fifty taches of gold, and join the curtains together with the taches; and it shall be one dwelling.A Song of degrees of David. Look, how good and how sweet it is for brothers to settle also together!In whom the whole building, joined at the joints, grows into a set-apart temple in the Lord.THE THREAD
And you shall make fifty taches of gold, and join the curtains together with the taches; and it shall be one dwelling.The word translated “couple” comes from חָבַר (chabar), meaning “to join,” the same root behind “compact together” in this verse. The tabernacle becomes one dwelling through joined pieces, opening Jerusalem’s unity as a form of joinery.
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