What Does Psalm 35:24 Mean?
Judge me according to your alignment, LORD my God; and let them not rejoice over me.
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
Judge me, O LORD my God, according to thy righteousness; and let them not rejoice over me.THE KEY
God’s judgment here is a plea for the matter to be set right, so an opponent’s celebration cannot serve as the final verdict.
THE MEANING
When another person’s judgment seems to define you, this verse places the case before the LORD. His righteousness is the measure, and the plea is that those rejoicing over you will not have the final word.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that an opponent’s rejoicing proves their cause is right; this verse brings that apparent victory before the LORD for judgment.
THE ROOT
שָׁפְטֵנִי
shofeteni
GROWS FROM
שפט
sh-p-t
To judge, decide a case, or govern.
“Judge” in this verse is shofeteni. The plea invokes the act of deciding a case, not just a verdict about the speaker’s character. Paired with God’s righteousness, judgment is the setting of the matter in right order.
ALSO GROWS
mishpat: judgment, justice
מִשְׁפָּט
This branch shows judgment as a ruling that establishes what is right.
shofet: judge, ruler
שֹׁפֵט
The judge also governs: the case rests with the one who has authority to set it right.
צִדְקָתֶךָ
tsidqatekha
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
To be right or just; rightness, alignment.
The speaker appeals to God’s own rightness as the measure of the case. English can make righteousness sound like an abstract virtue; here it is the standard by which the matter is brought into alignment.
ALSO GROWS
tsaddiq: just, righteous
צַדִּיק
This branch describes someone in right standing, echoing the verse’s appeal to what is right.
tsedaqah: righteousness, justice
צְדָקָה
This related noun keeps justice and rightness together in the standard the speaker invokes.
THE PATTERN
God’s judgment supplies the true measure when a cause is contested, so another’s apparent triumph does not settle the matter.
The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my alignment, and according to the wholeness within me.But he will judge the bent low with alignment, and reprove with straightness the bowed ones of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the restless.Who, when he was insulted, hurled no insult back; when he suffered, he threatened not; but handed himself over to the one who judges by alignment.THE THREAD
Judge me, O God, and contend for my cause against a nation that holds no faithful love. Slip me free from the man of the deceitful bow and of crookedness.Psalm 43:1 uses the same root שפט (sh-p-t, “judge”) and places judgment beside pleading a cause and deliverance from deceit. It opens Psalm 35:24 as a plea for the case to be rightly heard and set in order.
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