What Does Psalm 5:4 Mean?
For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; evil will not sojourn with you.
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
For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.THE KEY
The word translated “dwell” can mean “sojourn”: evil finds no lodging with God, not even as a passing guest.
THE MEANING
God does not delight in wickedness, and evil does not find a home in God’s presence. The verse speaks now of a God whose desire and presence are not at home with evil.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that God is indifferent to wickedness or welcomes it into his presence.
THE ROOT
יְגוּרְךָ
yegurkha
GROWS FROM
גור
To sojourn or reside as a stranger.
The verb translated “dwell” comes from the same root as גֵּר (ger), a sojourner or resident stranger. The verse says evil cannot even sojourn with God: it has no lodging in his presence.
ALSO GROWS
ger: A sojourner or resident stranger.
גֵּר
This branch makes the verb’s sense of staying as a sojourner visible: evil has no place with God, even as a guest.
megurim: Sojournings or places of residence.
מְגוּרִים
This related form shows the root can name a place of dwelling, sharpening the verse’s image of where evil can and cannot reside.
חָפֵץ
chafets
GROWS FROM
חפץ
To desire or take delight in.
“pleasure” in this verse is chafets. The verse speaks of God’s desire, not only of what he permits nearby. Its paired images, what God delights in and what can dwell with him, show that evil is neither his desire nor a presence at home with him.
ALSO GROWS
chephets: Desire, delight, or something desired.
חֵפֶץ
The noun carries the same root from the verb “takes pleasure,” tying pleasure to what is desired.
chafatsim: Desires or desired things.
חֲפָצִים
This plural form keeps the root’s sense of desire concrete: the verse describes what God does not want or delight in.
THE PATTERN
God’s presence and delight are not at home with evil.
For the LORD is aligned, and loves the deeds of alignment; the straight gaze upon his face.Your eyes are too clean to see harm, and you cannot gaze at toil. Why do you look upon the treacherous ones, and hold your tongue when the wicked swallows the man more aligned than he?This, then, is the message we have heard from him, and we declare to you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David. LORD, who may sojourn in your tent? Who may settle on your set-apart mountain?The question “who shall abide” uses the same Hebrew root גור, “sojourn,” as “dwell” in Psalm 5:4. Psalm 5 says evil cannot sojourn with God; Psalm 15 asks who can sojourn in his dwelling.
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