What Does Psalm 4:1 Mean?
To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm of David. Answer me when I call, O God of my alignment. In the narrow place you widen me. Bend toward me, and hear and respond to my prayer.
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
To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm of David. Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.THE KEY
The Hebrew gives distress the shape of a narrow place, and God’s answer the shape of room opening.
THE MEANING
You name God as the source of your alignment and remember being given room in distress. You ask for favor and for your prayer to be heard now; the verse holds remembered widening and present need together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A tight circumstance does not mean there is no room for you.
THE ROOT
הִרְחַבְתָּ
hirchavta
GROWS FROM
רחב
To be broad or make wide.
“you widen me” in this verse is hirchavta. This verb’s root also appears in מֶרְחָב (merchav), a wide-open place, as in Psalm 118:5. English “enlarged” can sound like increased size; the root gives the rescue a spatial shape: room opens where distress had narrowed life.
ALSO GROWS
merchav: A broad or open place.
מֶרְחָב
Psalm 118:5 uses this word for the large place God gives the one who calls in distress.
Rehoboth: Broad places; room.
רְחֹבוֹת
In Genesis 26:22, this name accompanies the words “the LORD hath made room for us,” carrying the same root’s image of space opening.
בַּצָּר
batsar
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind, press in, or make narrow.
The word evokes being in a tight, constricted place, not distress as an abstraction. The next verb answers with the opposite shape: what is pressed in becomes wide.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight, or constricted.
צַר
This close form makes the spatial image beneath “distress” visible.
Mitsrayim: Egypt; heard through the image of the two narrows.
מִצְרַיִם
The name carries the wider scriptural image of constriction that gives this personal distress its place in the movement toward spaciousness.
צִדְקִי
tsidqi
GROWS FROM
צדק
Rightness, justice, or alignment.
The speaker names God as “the God of my alignment,” placing the appeal for room and favor in a relationship of rightness. The verse joins inward alignment with widening in distress, rather than treating them as separate needs.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Rightness, justice, alignment.
צֶדֶק
It gives “my righteousness” the concrete sense of being in right relation.
tsedaqah: Justice or right action; alignment expressed in conduct.
צְדָקָה
This branch shows alignment extending into the way a person stands and acts.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures relief as room opening where distress has narrowed life.
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.Widen the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your dwellings stretch out. Do not hold back; lengthen your cords, and grip your pegs.O Corinthians, our mouth is open toward you, our heart is widened.THE THREAD
And he pulled up from there, and dug another well, and over that they did not strive. And he called the name of it Rehoboth, the wide places, and he said, For now the LORD has widened a place for us, and we shall bear fruit in the land.“Made room” carries the same רחב (rachav) root as “enlarged” here. Genesis gives that opened space the name Rehoboth, making room itself the verse’s answer to constriction.
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