What Does Psalm 36:6 Mean?
Your alignment is like the mountains of God; your judgments are a great deep. O LORD, you deliver humankind and beast.
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
Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.THE KEY
The LORD’s immense alignment and judgment reach every living kind, because “preservest” here carries the sense of deliverance.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s alignment stands like the mountains, and his judgments reach as deep as the great deep. His deliverance holds human and animal life alike within its care.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The idea that only human life falls within the LORD’s care is undone by the verse’s plain pairing of man and beast.
THE ROOT
תוֹשִׁיעַ
toshiaʿ
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ע
To deliver, bring into safety; to open a way from constriction into room to live.
“deliver” in this verse is toshiaʿ. The verb rendered “preservest” belongs to the same root family as יְשׁוּעָה (yeshuah, deliverance) and יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua, a name carrying the sense of the LORD delivering). Preservation here has the force of deliverance, and its reach includes both people and animals.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun makes explicit the deliverance carried by the verb translated “preservest.”
Yeshua: A name carrying the sense of the LORD delivering
יֵשׁוּעַ
The name belongs to this same deliverance family, revealing deliverance as a nature, not merely an event.
צִדְקָתְךָ
tsidqatekha
GROWS FROM
צ־ד־ק
Rightness and justice; what is aligned with what is right.
The word’s sense of alignment makes righteousness more than an abstract moral measure: it is right relation made firm. Here that alignment is pictured as mountain-like, steady and vast.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Rightness, justice
צֶדֶק
This related form shows the shared root beneath the verse’s language of righteousness.
tsaddiq: One who is right or just
צַדִּיק
The same root describes a person whose life stands in alignment with what is right.
מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ
mishpatekha
GROWS FROM
ש־פ־ט
To judge, decide, or set a matter in order.
“judgments” in this verse is mishpatekha. The verse pairs alignment with judgment, then compares judgment to the great deep. This makes judgment feel like a depth of divine ordering that exceeds what the reader can see at the surface.
ALSO GROWS
shofet: Judge
שֹׁפֵט
The person who judges belongs to the same root family as the judgments described here.
mishpat: Judgment, decision, or ordinance
מִשְׁפָּט
This singular form shows the root’s range from a decision to the ordering that decisions establish.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s sustaining care extends across living kinds and all his works.
The LORD is good to all, and his compassions are over all his works.Look at the birds of the air, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into storehouses; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?THE THREAD
The LORD makes his deliverance known. He uncovers his alignment before the eyes of the nations.Psalm 36’s “preservest” comes from י־ש־ע (y־sh־ʿ), the same root family behind “salvation” here. Psalm 98 places deliverance and righteousness together, just as Psalm 36 joins deliverance with alignment and judgment.
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