What Does Psalm 135:11 Mean?
Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan.
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
Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan:THE KEY
The two kings and “all the kingdoms” grow from one Hebrew root of rule, widening the list from named rulers to the whole order they govern.
THE MEANING
You hear two rulers named first, then the whole landscape of Canaanite rule gathered into one phrase. In the hymn’s surrounding lines, this list belongs to the smiting of kings and the giving of their land as inheritance. The violence is part of the claim; the line does not make it abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that this inheritance is presented as a bloodless transfer: the surrounding lines name the smiting of kings and the giving of their land.
THE ROOT
מַמְלְכוֹת
mamlakhot
GROWS FROM
מלך
Rule, reign
The verse sets מֶלֶךְ (melekh, king) beside מַמְלְכוֹת (mamlakhot, kingdoms), forms grown from the same three-letter root, מלך (m-l-k). Its scope widens from two named rulers to all the kingdoms of Canaan: individual kings and the systems they govern belong to one vocabulary of rule.
ALSO GROWS
melekh: King
מֶלֶךְ
This is the title given to Sihon and Og; each named ruler shares the root of the kingdoms that follow.
malakh: To reign
מָלַךְ
The verb names the act of rule that links the kings to the territories under their authority.
mamlakhah: Kingdom, dominion
מַמְלָכָה
This singular form is the same word family as “kingdoms,” making the verse’s widening movement from rulers to their domains visible.
THE PATTERN
The hymn locates inheritance in the defeat of named rulers and the transfer of their land.
Sihon, king of the Amorites, for his faithful love reaches to the ages.So the children went in and possessed the land, and you brought low before them the settlers of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hands, with their kings and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would.And when he had pulled down seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot.THE THREAD
And Og, king of Bashan, for his faithful love reaches to the ages.Here Og is named with מֶלֶךְ (melekh, king), from מלך (m-l-k, rule or reign), the same root as “kingdoms” in the current verse. The shared root links the individual ruler to the wider structures of rule named around him.
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