What Does Psalm 25:4 Mean?
Show me your ways, LORD; teach me your paths.
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
Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.THE KEY
The verse asks for more than directions: it asks to know the path from within and be taught to walk it.
THE MEANING
The LORD makes the way known to the reader and teaches it as a path to be lived. Knowing is encounter, while teaching brings that knowledge into the reader’s steps. The paired requests hold disclosure and learning together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that the way must be figured out alone, or that knowing it means only receiving directions.
THE ROOT
דֶּרֶךְ
derek
GROWS FROM
דרך
To tread, step, or travel along.
“ways” in this verse is derek. דֶּרֶךְ (derek, “way”) grows from the root דרך (d-r-k, “to tread”). The word carries a course to be walked, not only information about where to go; beside “paths,” it makes the request immediate and lived.
ALSO GROWS
darak: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
The verb reveals the movement held inside “way”: it is a course one can actually tread.
midrakh: A footstep or place of treading.
מִדְרָךְ
This related form keeps the way close to the ground, as something marked by steps.
הוֹדִיעֵנִי
hodi’eni
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
“show me” in this verse is hodi’eni. The verb הוֹדִיעֵנִי (hodi’eni, “make me know”) comes from ידע (yada, “know, perceive”). The request reaches beyond seeing a route: it asks for the kind of knowing that comes through encounter with the way.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know, recognize, or perceive.
יָדַע
This base verb shows that “shew me” aims at knowing, not merely looking.
da’at: Knowledge or knowing.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root links the request to knowledge held through familiarity and encounter.
לַמְּדֵנִי
lammedeni
GROWS FROM
למד
To learn or be trained; in the form used here, to teach.
לַמְּדֵנִי (lammedeni, “teach me”) comes from למד (lamad, “learn, be trained”). The root holds learning and teaching together: the path is taught in a way that forms the learner, not just supplies rules.
ALSO GROWS
lamad: To learn or be trained.
לָמַד
The base verb shows the learner’s side of the teaching named in the verse.
limmud: One who is taught or trained.
לִמּוּד
This related form points to the person shaped by instruction, joining teaching to formation.
THE PATTERN
The way is disclosed as a path people are taught to walk, so knowing becomes lived movement.
And many peoples shall go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will aim us along his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for out of Zion the instruction shall go forth, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.I make you wise, and I teach you in the way you walk. I guide you with my eye upon you.Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.THE THREAD
Aim me along your way, O LORD, and I walk in your truth; gather my heart into one, to the awe of your name.The same Hebrew noun דֶּרֶךְ (derek, “way”) appears in both verses. Psalm 86:11 pairs it with אֲהַלֵּךְ (ahalekh, “I will walk”), making explicit what the root holds: the way being taught is a course the reader walks.
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