What Does Psalm 25:18 Mean?
See my bowing down and my toil, and release all my shortcomings.
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
Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.THE KEY
Here forgiveness is asked for as a lifting: the same plea that names pain asks God to carry away every miss.
THE MEANING
Your affliction and pain can be named alongside the places you have missed the mark. The verse brings both into one appeal: look upon the suffering, and release every missing. The request for release does not erase the pain or leave it unseen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that you must be blameless before your pain is worthy of being seen: here affliction and every missing are named in one appeal.
THE ROOT
וְשָׂא
wəśāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasaʾ
To lift, carry, or bear; in context, to lift away a burden or guilt.
וְשָׂא means “and lift” or “and carry.” The plea for release pictures the burden of the missing being lifted, immediately after the speaker asks to be seen in affliction and pain.
ALSO GROWS
massa: A burden, load, or oracle, a message carried as a burden.
מַשָּׂא
The shared root makes the request for release tangible: what weighs on the speaker can be lifted.
nasi: A prince or leader; one raised to a position.
נָשִׂיא
The root’s movement from lifting to elevation extends the image beyond a burden being carried away.
חַטֹּאותָי
ḥaṭṭōʾṯāy
GROWS FROM
חטא
chataʾ
To miss, fail, or go astray.
“shortcomings” in this verse is ḥaṭṭōʾṯāy. The word translated “sins” grows from the language of missing or going astray, not only from a label of guilt. The verse asks for every missing to be released, making each one nameable rather than hidden.
ALSO GROWS
chataʾ: To miss, fail, or sin.
חָטָא
This verb exposes the image beneath “sin”: a miss or a departure from the way.
chattaʾt: Missing or sin; also, a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
The same word family holds both the missing and what is brought in response to it.
THE PATTERN
The text brings bodily affliction and the burden of missing into one plea, where both may be seen and released.
Who releases all your crookedness; who heals all your sicknesses.But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to release shortcomings, then he said to the loosened man, Rise, lift up your bed, and go to your house.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The psalm’s וְשָׂא (wəśāʾ, “and lift or carry”) and Isaiah’s נָשָׂא (nasaʾ, “he hath borne”) share the root נשא. That shared verb lets the request for release appear as burden-bearing, unfolding the psalm’s pairing of pain and missing.
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