What Does Psalm 37:38 Mean?
But those who break away will be destroyed together; the end of the wicked will be cut off.
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
But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.THE KEY
The verse names rebellion’s promised escape as a severed future: what breaks away does not become free of consequence.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the reader now: those who make rebellion their way are destroyed together, and the wicked’s end is cut off. This is not a temporary setback; the line describes a decisive severance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that breaking away can secure lasting freedom: the future that path promises is cut off.
THE ROOT
נִכְרָתָה
nikhretah
GROWS FROM
כרת
to cut, sever, or cut off
The word behind “cut off” is built on כרת (karat), the verb also used for “cut a covenant.” Hebrew’s wording lets one root hold both binding and severance; here the wicked’s end is described as a decisive separation, not merely a fading.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: to cut a covenant; idiomatically, to make a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
Genesis 15:18 uses this verb for covenant-making, showing that the same root can mark a bond being established.
sefer keritut: a bill of divorce, a document of severance
סֵפֶר כְּרִיתוּת
This branch makes the root’s separation sense explicit and illuminates the force of the end being cut off.
פֹּשְׁעִים
poshe’im
GROWS FROM
פשע
to rebel, break away
“those who break away” in this verse is poshe’im. The word carries the sense of rebellion, a breaking away. The verse presents that break as a path whose destination is itself severance.
ALSO GROWS
pesha: rebellion, breaking away
פֶּשַׁע
This noun names the rupture beneath the people described as transgressors.
pasha: to rebel, break away
פָּשַׁע
The verb makes the action vivid: the verse speaks of people whose way is defined by breaking away.
אַחֲרִית
aḥarit
GROWS FROM
אחר
after, behind
The Hebrew word for “end” carries the sense of what comes after. The verse points from a present way to its outcome: what follows that way is cut off.
ALSO GROWS
aḥar: after, behind
אַחַר
This basic sense gives “end” the feel of what comes afterward.
aḥaron: last, latter
אַחֲרוֹן
This related form also locates something at the far end of what comes after.
THE PATTERN
The way of rebellion does not secure a lasting future; its endpoint is named as perishing, death, or destruction.
For the LORD perceives the way of the aligned, but the way of the wicked loses its way.There is a way straight before a man, but its latter end is the ways of death.Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and roomy is the way that leads to perishing, and many are those who go in through it.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.Genesis 15:18 uses כרת (karat, cut) in the phrase translated “made a covenant”; Psalm 37:38 uses the same root for “cut off.” The echo makes the ending more than a generic finish: it carries the force of a decisive severance.
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