What Does Psalm 48:6 Mean?
Trembling seized them there, and writhing, as of a woman in labor.
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
Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail.THE KEY
The Hebrew names fear as trembling: it is already shaking in the body before the labor-like pain arrives.
THE MEANING
Fear can seize a person so fully that the body trembles and aches. The image of a woman in travail gives that anguish its full bodily force. The verse lets the fear remain terrible rather than turning it into a comforting metaphor.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that fear is only an inward thought: it can grip the body and make anguish visible.
THE ROOT
רְעָדָה
rəʿādāh
GROWS FROM
רעד
To tremble, shake, or quake.
The word rendered “fear” names trembling: the line begins with a body already shaking before the pangs arrive. English can make fear sound like an invisible state; this Hebrew word names its visible movement.
ALSO GROWS
rāʿad: The verbal form for trembling or shaking.
רָעַד
It shows that the verse’s “fear” belongs to physical movement, not only to an inward feeling.
rəʿādāh: The noun form used for the trembling itself.
רְעָדָה
The verse presents fear as a bodily condition that has already taken hold.
חִיל
ḥîl
GROWS FROM
חול
To writhe, twist, or whirl; in this word family, to travail.
The word for pain is linked to a root of twisting and writhing, and this verse makes the labor image explicit. Anguish is not merely named; it moves through and takes over the body.
ALSO GROWS
ḥûl: A verb for twisting or writhing, including in labor.
חוּל
It reveals the bodily motion inside the verse’s word for pain.
məḥōl: A circle or whirling movement, expressed as dance.
מְחוֹל
It shares the root’s sense of motion; here that motion is anguish, not celebration.
אֲחָזָתַם
ʾaḥāzatam
GROWS FROM
אחז
To seize, grasp, or take hold.
“Took hold” in this verse is ʾaḥāzatam. The verb pictures fear closing its grip around a person. Alongside the word for trembling, it makes the verse’s terror feel like a force acting on the body, not simply a thought passing through it.
ALSO GROWS
ʾaḥuzzāh: A holding or possession.
אֲחֻזָּה
It carries the root’s sense of something being firmly held.
ʾāḥūz: Something seized or held.
אָחוּז
It echoes the verse’s picture of fear taking hold of people.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses labor pangs to make overwhelming anguish bodily, gripping, and visible.
And they will be startled; pangs and cords will take hold of them; they will writhe as a woman in labor; they will gape at one another; their faces will be as flames.We have heard the report of it, and our hands have dropped. The narrow place has seized us, cords as of a woman in labor.A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.THE THREAD
We have heard the report of it, and our hands have dropped. The narrow place has seized us, cords as of a woman in labor.Both verses use חִיל (ḥîl), meaning a labor pang or anguish. Jeremiah also describes distress taking hold of the body, opening Psalm 48:6’s image of fear as a physical grip.
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