What Does Psalm 139:3 Mean?
You winnow my path and my lying down, and you are accustomed to all my ways.
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
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.THE KEY
Your whole life is sifted into view: the road you tread and the moment you lie down are both known.
THE MEANING
Your route through the day and your lying down are both within God’s intimate knowing. The paths you tread are familiar to the One who sees the whole pattern of your life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that the still, private parts of your life fall outside God’s knowing dissolves here; the verse places lying down alongside every path.
THE ROOT
זֵרִיתָ
zērîtā
GROWS FROM
ז־ר־ה
z-r-h
To scatter or disperse; in the context of grain, to winnow or sift.
The form זֵרִיתָ (zērîtā, “you sift or winnow”) gives “compassest” the added image of thorough sifting. The verse places both your path and your lying down within that close attention.
ALSO GROWS
zārâ: To scatter, disperse, or winnow.
זָרָה
This verb supplies the sifting image beneath “compassest,” giving the verse a sense of your whole course being examined closely.
mizreh: A winnowing fork or shovel.
מִזְרֶה
The tool made for winnowing keeps the root’s image concrete: material is tossed and sifted through.
דְּרָכַי
derakhai
GROWS FROM
ד־ר־ך
d-r-k
To tread or step; the related noun is a path or road.
The Hebrew for “my ways” grows from the language of treading. Your ways are the tracks made by your steps, and every one of them is familiar to God.
ALSO GROWS
derekh: A way, road, or path.
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the noun at the center of “my ways”; it pictures a life as a route traveled.
dārakh: To tread or step.
דָּרַךְ
The verb reveals how a way becomes a way: it is formed by steps taken along it.
THE PATTERN
Divine knowing reaches the whole lived path, including ordinary movement and stillness.
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he levels all his paths.The LORD watches over your going out and your coming in, from now and to the ages.And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he levels all his paths.The same Hebrew word-family, דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, “way” or “path”), appears in both verses. Its connection to דָּרַךְ (dārakh, “to tread”) makes a life legible as the track of its steps, all held in God’s sight.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us