What Does Psalm 130:2 Mean?
Lord, hear and respond to my voice; let your ears be taut to the voice of my pleas.
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
Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.THE KEY
The plea is not just asking to be heard; its very name is an appeal for favor.
THE MEANING
This verse gives your plea a voice before God and asks for more than sound to be registered: it asks for attentive hearing. “Supplications” names appeals for favor, so the prayer rests in the possibility of gracious attention even before any answer is named.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעָה
shimʿah
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, heed; here, hearing leans toward response.
“hear and respond” in this verse is shimʿah. The request is for more than sound to reach God: the root can carry the sense of hearing with heed. The prayer asks for attention that receives the voice as a plea.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear; hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
This familiar imperative shows the root’s movement from hearing toward response.
shemuʿah: Report, news; what is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The same root names both the act of hearing and something received through hearing, linking the voice to what reaches its listener.
תַּחֲנוּנָי
taḥanunai
GROWS FROM
חנן
ḥ-n-n
Show favor; be gracious.
“pleas” in this verse is taḥanunai. The word translated “supplications” grows from the root for favor. The prayer is therefore voiced as an appeal to be met graciously, not merely as a request for a hearing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥen: Favor.
חֵן
This branch makes explicit the favor carried within the word for supplication.
ḥannûn: Gracious; one who shows favor.
חַנּוּן
The branch describes the gracious attention the supplicant is asking for.
THE PATTERN
A voiced plea is presented as something God hears, not something lost in silence.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.And this is the open speech we hold toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.THE THREAD
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Psalm 130 asks the LORD to hear, and Psalm 34 uses the same Hebrew שמע root in “heareth.” The connection moves from petition to assurance: the cry reaches hearing, and hearing is joined to deliverance.
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