What Does Psalm 140:3 Mean?
They whet their tongues like a serpent, and the venom of adders is under their lips. Selah.
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
They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under their lips. Selah.THE KEY
The hidden danger is not only the tongue’s sharp edge but the poison concealed beneath the lips.
THE MEANING
When someone speaks against you, the words can cut and carry hidden venom beneath the lips. The image speaks now: harm can enter through speech before it leaves a visible wound. “Selah” holds the image in a pause.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that words are harmless because they leave no visible wound: it pictures speech as a sharpened edge carrying concealed poison.
THE ROOT
שָׁנְנוּ
shannenu
GROWS FROM
שׁנן
sh-n-n
To sharpen or whet; figuratively, to impress through repetition.
“whet” in this verse is shannenu. The same root that sharpens this hostile tongue appears in the word translated “teach diligently” in Deuteronomy 6:7, where instruction is repeated and impressed. The image gives repeated speech two directions: it can wound like an edge or make something stay in the heart.
ALSO GROWS
shinnen: To sharpen or whet.
שִׁנֵּן
Psalm 64:3 uses this root for tongues whetted like swords, making the weapon-like quality of speech explicit.
veshinnantam: To teach diligently or impress through repetition.
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם
Deuteronomy 6:7 uses the same root for instruction repeated to children, showing how sharpened words can also leave a lasting impression.
שְׂפָתֵימוֹ
sephatheimo
GROWS FROM
שׂפה
s-f-h
Lip; by extension, the edge of something or a language.
The Hebrew word translated “lips” also names language and an edge, such as a shore. The poison is placed just beneath the boundary where hidden intent becomes spoken language.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip or language.
שָׂפָה
The same word can name the lips that form speech and the language spoken through them.
sefat hayam: The shore or edge of the sea.
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
This use of the word for an edge echoes the verse’s placement of poison just beneath the lips, at speech’s boundary.
THE PATTERN
Speech can wound like a weapon and carry poison beneath its surface.
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.There is one who blurts like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is healing.But the tongue no one is able to tame; it is an evil that will not stand still, full of death-bearing venom.THE THREAD
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.Psalm 64 uses the same root for sharpening a tongue like a sword, then extends the image to arrows made of bitter words. The shared root reveals the mechanism: speech is honed into an edge before it wounds.
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