What Does Psalm 144:13 Mean?
That our storehouses may be full, bringing out from kind to kind; and our sheep may bear thousands and ten thousands in our streets.
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
That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store: that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets:THE KEY
The verse measures abundance by what a full storehouse can bring forth, not simply by what it contains.
THE MEANING
The verse imagines a community with provision stored and yielding, while its flocks multiply in the open places where people live. Fullness is both held and productive; its reach extends into shared life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being full means merely possessing more: here, fullness is seen in what the storehouse can yield.
THE ROOT
מְפִיקִים
mefiqim
GROWS FROM
פוק
puq
To bring out or yield; in some forms, to obtain.
“bringing out from kind to kind” in this verse is mefiqim. The word rendered “affording” comes from a root that can describe both bringing something out and obtaining something. A full storehouse is not inert stock: its fullness shows in what it yields, while the same root elsewhere describes obtaining understanding.
ALSO GROWS
get: Obtain understanding.
In Proverbs 3:13, this root is translated “getteth”: the storehouse yields provision here, while a person obtains understanding there.
obtain: Obtain favor.
Proverbs 8:35 uses the same root for obtaining favor, linking the idea of what is yielded with what is received.
THE PATTERN
Abundance is expressed as provision that fills and yields beyond itself.
The LORD shall command the blessing upon you in your storehouses, and in all that you stretch out your hand to. He shall bless you in the land that the LORD your God gives you.Your barns are filled full, and your vats burst with new wine.And God is able to make all favor overflow toward you, so that you, always holding all you need in everything, may overflow into every good work.THE THREAD
Flourishing is the human who finds wisdom, and the human who draws out understanding.The verb rendered “affording” here and “getteth” in Proverbs 3:13 share the root פוק (puq), meaning to bring out or obtain. One verse pictures storehouse provision being yielded; the other describes obtaining understanding, joining material and inward abundance through the same root.
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