What Does Psalm 41:5 Mean?
My enemies speak harm of me, saying, 'When will he die, and his name perish?'
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
Mine enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name perish?THE KEY
The death wish reaches beyond the body: it wants the nature carried in the person’s name erased too.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment when hostility says its wish aloud: it wants you dead and your name gone with you. The attack aims at both your living presence and the nature your name carries into the world.
THE ROOT
וְאָבַד
veʾāvad
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
To be lost, perish, or disappear.
“his name perish” in this verse is veʾāvad. The verb can mean more than dying: it can mean being lost or disappearing. Beside שֵׁם (shem, name as nature and renown), it reveals a wish to erase both the living person and the identity their name carries forward.
ALSO GROWS
ʾoved: Perishing; one who is lost.
אֹבֵד
Shows disappearance as a condition, not only a single event.
ʾavedah: Loss; something lost.
אֲבֵדָה
The same root names what can no longer be found, echoing the wish that the person and their name vanish.
ʾavaddon: Destruction.
אֲבַדּוֹן
Carries the root’s movement from being lost toward complete ruin.
THE PATTERN
Hostility becomes a bid for erasure when it wishes a person out of the living.
For I hear the whispering of many; terror is all around, as they sit down together against me, and plot to take my living soul.But I was like a tame lamb led to the slaughter, and I did not perceive that they had made plans against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with its bread, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name is remembered no more.And when many days were filled, the Jews took counsel to kill him.THE THREAD
You rebuke the nations; you make the wicked lose the way; you wipe out their name for the ages and ages.This verse joins the same root, אבד (ʾ-b-d, perish or destroy), with שֵׁם (shem, name as nature and renown). Here the enemies wish that the speaker’s life and name disappear; Psalm 9:5 turns the pairing around, placing the erasure on the wicked.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us