What Does Psalm 140:12 Mean?
I know that the LORD takes up the case of the bowed ones, and the judgment of those in want.
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
I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the right of the poor.THE KEY
The LORD’s care becomes a legal act: he takes the poor person’s case into judgment and secures their right.
THE MEANING
The LORD takes up the case of the one being pressed down and upholds what is due to the one in need. His care is active: the verse says he does justice for them now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Need does not make your claim disappear, and affliction does not make you invisible to God. The belief that only the powerful can secure a hearing is undone here.
THE ROOT
דִּין
din
GROWS FROM
דין
To judge, adjudicate, or decide a case.
The word translated “cause” names a matter brought under judgment. Paired with “right,” it pictures the LORD actively taking up the afflicted person’s case and upholding what is due.
ALSO GROWS
dayyan: judge
דַּיָּן
The judge is the one who decides the דין (din, case); the afflicted person’s concern is treated as a matter for judgment, not a private ache.
dinim: judgments; legal cases
דִּינִים
This plural keeps the word in the sphere of concrete cases needing a decision, making the LORD’s action specific to the needy person’s claim.
מִשְׁפָּט
mishpat
GROWS FROM
שפט
To judge, decide, or govern a case.
“judgment” in this verse is mishpat. מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, right or justice) belongs to the same root family as judging. The verse moves from the case being taken up to the right being upheld: justice is something the LORD does.
ALSO GROWS
shofet: judge
שֹׁפֵט
This names the one who exercises judgment; the verse presents the LORD as acting in that role for the needy.
shafat: he judged; he decided a case
שָׁפַט
The verb makes judgment an action, echoing the verse’s claim that the LORD actively upholds the poor person’s right.
THE PATTERN
God’s justice shows itself by taking up the cause of people made vulnerable by affliction and need.
He judges the bowed ones of the people; he delivers the children of those in want, and crushes the one who presses.Learn to do good. Seek justice, straighten the crushed, judge the fatherless, contend for the widow.Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
Judge the low and the fatherless; align the bowed down and the dispossessed.Psalm 82:3 uses שפט (shafat, “judge”) in “Defend,” joining the same judging root found in מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, “right”) here with the poor and afflicted. The shared root reveals justice as taking up their case directly.
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