What Does Psalm 44:2 Mean?
You, with your hand, drove out the nations and planted them; you broke the peoples and sent them away.
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
How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.THE KEY
The Hebrew root for “drive out” also means “possess” or “inherit,” binding the planting of one people to the dispossession of another.
THE MEANING
Here, belonging is pictured as taking root while other peoples are afflicted and sent away. The hand that establishes one people is also named as the force that makes others leave. The reader sees both actions held together, with the planting image leaving the expulsion in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a story of settlement or flourishing must be a harmless gift: its planting stands beside the affliction and removal of others.
THE ROOT
הוֹרַשְׁתָּ
hōrashta
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
y-r-sh
Possess or inherit; in the causative form, dispossess or drive out.
The Hebrew root behind “drive out” also names possessing or inheriting. The language binds taking hold of the land to making other peoples lose their place.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: Possess, inherit
יָרַשׁ
This form names gaining possession, the other side of the same root used for driving people out.
horish: Dispossess, drive out
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form makes the loss of another people’s place part of the movement toward possession.
וַתִּטָּעֵם
wattittaʿem
GROWS FROM
נטע
n-t-ʿ
Plant, set in the soil.
“plantedst” in this verse is wattittaʿem. The verse depicts the people’s settlement as planting: they take root in a place as other peoples are removed. The agricultural image gives belonging a sense of rootedness without concealing how the ground is cleared.
ALSO GROWS
nataʿ: Plant
נָטַע
This is the verb behind the verse’s image of the people taking root in a place.
mattaʿ: Planting, plantation
מַטָּע
This related noun carries the same image of something established in the soil.
וַתְּשַׁלְּחֵם
watteshalleḥem
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send forth, send away, release.
“sent them away” in this verse is watteshalleḥem. The root can mean sending or releasing; here the action is plainly the sending away of peoples. The same motion that can describe release carries an unmistakably violent force in this verse.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release
שָׁלַח
This is the root sense beneath the verse’s “cast them out”: a sending away.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of a water channel or pool
שִׁלֹחַ
The related name carries the sense of something sent forth, while here the people themselves are sent away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can describe a people’s settlement as inheritance while naming the expulsion and labor from which it comes.
By small measures I will drive them out from before you, until you are fruitful and take hold of the land.And I have given you a land you did not toil for, and cities you did not build, and you settle in them. From vineyards and olive groves you did not plant, you eat.And he gave them the lands of nations, and they took hold of the toil of the peoples.THE THREAD
You carry a vine out of Egypt; you drive out the nations and plant it.The same planting root, נטע (nataʿ, plant), joins this verse to the image of a vine planted after the heathen are cast out. The vine’s growth and the people’s removal remain in the same sentence.
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