What Does Psalm 122:6 Mean?
Ask for the wholeness of Jerusalem; those who love you are at ease.
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
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.THE KEY
The prayer for Jerusalem’s shalom, its wholeness, and the ease of those who love her are one shared fate.
THE MEANING
Jerusalem’s wholeness and the ease of those who love her are held together in this verse. It speaks to you as someone whose well-being is bound to the wholeness of the place you love.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your well-being can be separated from the wholeness of the place and people you love.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
שלם (sh-l-m): to be whole, complete, or sound.
שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness) belongs to the root שלם (sh-l-m), which also forms שָׁלֵם (shalem, whole) and שְׁלָמִים (shelamim, well-being offerings). Peace here carries wholeness and restored relation beneath the English word, joining the lovers’ ease to the city’s whole life.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: whole, complete, sound
שָׁלֵם
This adjective makes the wholeness within shalom visible: the prayer reaches beyond quiet to the city’s integrity.
shelamim: well-being offerings, peace offerings
שְׁלָמִים
This noun carries the same root into shared well-being and restored relation.
shillem: to repay, recompense
שִׁלֵּם
This verb shows another branch of the root: making good what is owed or due.
שַׁאֲלוּ
sha'alu
GROWS FROM
שאל
שאל (sha’al): to ask, inquire, or request.
“Ask for” in this verse is sha'alu. שַׁאֲלוּ (sha’alu, ask) is a plural command: the verse gives a shared request, not a private abstraction. Its object is Jerusalem’s wholeness, so the prayer is linguistically aimed at the common good.
ALSO GROWS
she'elah: a request, question
שְׁאֵלָה
This noun shows the root naming what is asked or sought.
mish'al: a request, petition
מִשְׁאָל
This branch gives the word for a stated desire or petition, echoing the verse’s concrete request for Jerusalem.
אֹהֲבָיִךְ
ohavayikh
GROWS FROM
אהב
אהב (ahav): to love or hold in affection.
The verse names the beneficiaries as those who love Jerusalem. The root אהב (ahav, love) also forms אָהוּב (ahuv, beloved), holding affection and belovedness in one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
ahavah: love, affection
אַהֲבָה
This noun names the affection the verse identifies as the bond between people and Jerusalem.
ahuv: beloved
אָהוּב
This related form shows the other side of love: the one who is held in affection.
THE PATTERN
A community’s well-being is sought as a shared good and becomes the setting for people’s own ease.
And seek the wholeness of the city where I have carried you away, and pray to the LORD for it, for in its wholeness you will have wholeness.For thus says the LORD. Behold, I stretch out wholeness to her like a river, and the weight of the nations like a flooding stream. Then you will suckle, you will be lifted at her side, and you will be bounced upon her knees.For kings, and for all who stand above; that we may lead a still and whole life in all awe and weight.THE THREAD
Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about, for his name shall be Solomon, wholeness, and I will give wholeness and stillness to Israel in his days.The name שְׁלֹמֹה (Shelomoh, Solomon) and שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness or peace) belong to the root שלם (sh-l-m, be whole). This verse lets the name and the condition of a people sound together, opening Jerusalem’s peace as communal wholeness.
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