What Does Psalm 26:10 Mean?
In whose hands are schemes, and their right hand is full of bribes.
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
In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes.THE KEY
The hidden scheme becomes visible in what the hands are willing to hold.
THE MEANING
A scheme takes shape in the hands that carry it, and the right hand is full of payments that compromise its action. The verse speaks now wherever what someone accepts reveals the intention behind it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an intention stays hidden as long as it remains unspoken: what the hands take can disclose the scheme.
THE ROOT
זִמָּה
zimmah
GROWS FROM
זמם
zamam
To devise, plan, or plot; in this verse, a harmful scheme.
“schemes” in this verse is zimmah. The word points to an intention formed in advance, not trouble that happens by accident. The hands reveal that the inward design has become action.
ALSO GROWS
zamam: To devise or plan.
זָמַם
The verb names the forming of an intention; the psalm shows that intention taking shape in what the hands do.
mezimmah: A plan, device, or scheme.
מְזִמָּה
This related noun appears in Proverbs 24:8 for a calculated design, illuminating the deliberateness inside “mischief” here.
שֹׁחַד
shochad
GROWS FROM
שחד
shachad
To give an inducement or bribe; the noun names the payment offered to sway someone.
“bribes” in this verse is shochad. This word can carry the sense of a gift as well as a bribe, while the verse makes the corrupting purpose plain. The right hand is not merely holding something; it is occupied by a payment meant to influence.
ALSO GROWS
shachad: To offer a bribe or inducement.
שָׁחַד
The verbal form names the act of using payment to incline another’s decision.
shochad: A gift, payment, or bribe.
שֹׁחַד
The noun can be rendered “gift” in Deuteronomy 16:19; there, as here, context reveals its power to distort.
THE PATTERN
A concealed design becomes visible through payments that bend what a person does or judges.
Do not take a bribe, for the bribe blinds the open-eyed and twists the words of the aligned.A wicked man takes a bribe out of the bosom, to bend the ways of judgment.And said to them, What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you? And they set out for him thirty pieces of silver.THE THREAD
You shall not bend judgment. You shall not recognize faces, nor take a bribe, for the bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the aligned.The word rendered “gift” here is שֹׁחַד (shochad), meaning a gift or bribe, the same Hebrew word rendered “bribes” in the psalm. Deuteronomy names the effect: the payment blinds and twists judgment, showing what fills the hand also bends its action.
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