What Does Psalm 123:4 Mean?
Our living soul is filled beyond measure with the mocking of those who lie at ease, and with the contempt of those who rise high.
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
Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.THE KEY
The Hebrew says the living soul is sated with scorn, showing that what fills a person can wound as much as it can satisfy.
THE MEANING
Your living self can be saturated by the ridicule of people who feel secure and the disdain of the proud. The verse names that fullness plainly; their contempt is not harmless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that contempt from comfortable or self-important people is too small to wound: the verse says it can fill the living self.
THE ROOT
שָׂבְעָה
sāḇʿāh
GROWS FROM
שׂבע
ś-b-ʿ
to be sated; to have one’s fill
“filled” in this verse is sāḇʿāh. The verb means to be sated or have one’s fill, and the verse intensifies it with “exceedingly.” The living soul is not merely brushed by mockery; scorn occupies it to fullness, a word that can also describe satisfaction.
ALSO GROWS
sāvēaʿ: sated, satisfied, having one’s fill
שָׂבֵעַ
This adjective names the reached state of fullness that the verse’s verb applies to the soul.
sōvaʿ: satiety, fullness
שֹׂבַע
This noun makes fullness itself visible; here that fullness is occupied by scorn.
THE PATTERN
Contempt rises from those who rank themselves above others and presses hardest on people with less standing.
The one who makes light of the one beside him misses the mark, but flourishing is the one who favors the bowed down.And he spoke this parable to some who leaned their weight on themselves, that they were aligned, and made nothing of others.But you have dishonored the emptied ones. Do not the rich press down on you, and drag you before the platform of judgment?THE THREAD
For he sates the thirsting living soul, and fills the hungry living soul with goodness.Psalm 107:9 uses the same Hebrew root שׂבע (ś-b-ʿ, to be sated) with נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, living soul): here the soul is sated with scorn, while there the longing soul is satisfied and the hungry soul is filled with goodness. The shared language shows fullness reaching the living self in both verses, while its source and substance differ.
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