What Does Psalm 21:10 Mean?
You make their fruit perish from the earth, and their seed from among the children of humankind.
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
Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.THE KEY
By naming both fruit and seed, the verse extends judgment from what has grown to what could continue after it.
THE MEANING
Here judgment reaches both what has been produced and the line that might produce more, removing them from the earth and from among humankind. “Fruit” and “seed” carry the loss across the present and the future, and the verse states that destruction without softening it.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
ז־ר־ע
z-r-ʿ
To sow; seed that is sown.
Zeraʿ can mean both seed and offspring, holding biological continuity inside an agricultural image. Its root is the act of sowing: what is cut off is the capacity for continuation.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: to sow
זָרַע
The verb names the act that gives seed its future: sowing begins what may grow.
zeraʿ: seed; offspring, descendants
זֶרַע
This is the verse’s word, carrying the sense of a line that can continue beyond the present.
פְּרִי
pərî
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ה
p-r-h
To bear fruit; to be fruitful.
The word for fruit is tied to being fruitful, so it names the visible yield of a source. Alongside seed, it makes the judgment reach both the result already produced and the potential to reproduce.
ALSO GROWS
pārāh: to bear fruit; to be fruitful
פָּרָה
The verb links fruit to the act and capacity of producing it.
pərî: fruit; produce
פְּרִי
This is what has already grown, the present yield named alongside the seed that could follow.
תְּאַבֵּד
teʾabbed
GROWS FROM
א־ב־ד
ʾ-b-d
To perish or be lost; in this form, to cause to perish or bring to ruin.
“make perish” in this verse is teʾabbed. The root carries the sense of perishing or being lost; here it makes the addressee the agent who brings that loss about. Its force is concrete in the verse: the fruit and seed are destroyed.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: to perish; to be lost
אָבַד
The root’s basic sense shows the destruction as a passage into loss.
ʾăbaddôn: destruction; ruin
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related noun carries the root’s movement from being lost into destruction.
THE PATTERN
Judgment is pictured as removing both the visible yield of a source and its capacity to continue.
For the LORD loves judgment and does not leave his faithful ones. They are guarded for the ages, but the seed of the wicked will be cut off.For I will rise up against them, says the LORD of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name and the remnant, the son and the offspring, says the LORD.And already the axe lies at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut out and thrown into the fire.THE THREAD
For the LORD loves judgment and does not leave his faithful ones. They are guarded for the ages, but the seed of the wicked will be cut off.Psalm 37:28 uses the same Hebrew zeraʿ, “seed” or “offspring,” and sets the cutting off of the wicked’s seed beside the LORD’s preservation of the faithful. That shared word makes the verse’s reach across a continuing line unmistakable.
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