What Does Psalm 36:8 Mean?
They are drenched with the fatness of your house; and you make them drink from the stream of your delights.
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
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.THE KEY
The Hebrew word behind “abundantly satisfied” means saturated, so the verse moves from being filled to being given a river to drink.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of a life held in God’s abundance: you are filled from God’s house and given drink from a river of delight. Its picture joins fullness to refreshment that keeps flowing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that real fullness is scarce or must be produced entirely by your own effort.
THE ROOT
יִרְוְיֻן
yirweyun
GROWS FROM
רוה
To drink one’s fill; to be saturated.
“drenched” in this verse is yirweyun. The word comes from רוה, which can mean to drink one’s fill or to be saturated. Jeremiah uses the same root for “I will satiate,” so the image is of fullness that reaches through the whole person.
ALSO GROWS
hirvēti: I satiated; I gave drink abundantly.
הִרְוֵיתִי
Jeremiah 31:14 uses this form for God’s satiating action, showing the fullness here as saturation.
marveh: One who waters or gives drink.
מַרְוֶה
Proverbs 11:25 uses it for the one who waters others, extending the root’s image from receiving fullness to refreshment that flows onward.
דִּשְׁנֵי
dishnei
GROWS FROM
דשן
To become fat, rich, or luxuriant.
This root carries the sense of becoming rich or luxuriant, not merely containing a lot. “Fatness” is the nourishing fullness of a house, the kind of plenty in which life flourishes.
ALSO GROWS
deshen: Fatness; rich abundance.
דֶּשֶׁן
This noun names the rich plenty supplied by the house in the verse.
tedushan: Shall be made fat or enriched.
תְּדֻשָּׁן
In Proverbs 11:25 it describes a life being enriched, extending the root from richness to flourishing.
עֲדָנֶיךָ
ʿadāneikha
GROWS FROM
עדן
To delight; to be luxurious or rich in pleasure.
This word belongs to the family of עֵדֶן (ʿēden), delight, and מַעֲדָנִים (maʿadānîm), delicacies. The “river of your delights” is pleasure with substance and taste, flowing toward the one who drinks.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēden: Delight; also the name Eden.
עֵדֶן
The shared word family lets God’s “delights” echo Eden’s name, tying the river to the language of delight.
maʿadānîm: Delicacies; dainties.
מַעֲדָנִים
Genesis 49:20 uses this form for royal delicacies, giving the verse’s “pleasures” a concrete richness.
THE PATTERN
God’s provision is pictured as abundance that fills the thirsty and overflows into living streams.
You lay out a table before my face, in full view of those who press me. You make my head rich with oil; my cup is soaked full.Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no silver, come, break open and eat. Yes, come, break open wine and milk, without silver and without price.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
I will drench the living soul of the priests with fat, and my people will be filled with my goodness, declares the LORD.The Hebrew verb translated “satiate” comes from רוה, the same root behind “abundantly satisfied” here. Jeremiah also pairs that saturation with דֶּשֶׁן, from the same root as “fatness,” repeating the image of fullness that nourishes.
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