What Does Psalm 50:16 Mean?
But to the wicked, God says, What is it to you, to recount my statutes, or to lift my covenant upon your mouth?
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
But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?THE KEY
The verse exposes the distance between carrying God’s covenant on the lips and living under its claim.
THE MEANING
This question meets the reader wherever sacred words become a claim to authority without a matching life. The covenant can be spoken aloud while its demand remains uncarried; the verse brings that divide into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Quoting or teaching sacred words does not, by itself, prove that the speaker lives by what those words say.
THE ROOT
וַתִּשָּׂא
vattissaʾ
GROWS FROM
נָשָׂא
nasaʾ
To lift, carry, or bear.
The Hebrew says to lift or bear the covenant upon the mouth. The image makes speech a kind of carrying: the question is whether the speaker bears what the mouth names.
ALSO GROWS
massaʾ: A burden or load
מַשָּׂא
A burden is something carried; the covenant in the mouth is pictured as something the speaker bears.
nasiʾ: A prince or leader, one elevated
נָשִׂיא
This related form carries the sense of being lifted, reinforcing the root’s physical image of bearing or elevation.
לְסַפֵּר
lesapper
GROWS FROM
סָפַר
safar
To count, recount, or tell.
“recount” in this verse is lesapper. The verb translated “declare” belongs to a root that can mean counting or recounting. The verse puts the speaking of God’s instruction beside the question of what the speaker is actually carrying.
ALSO GROWS
sefer: A book or scroll
סֵפֶר
A sefer holds words to be read and recounted, linking the act of declaring to the written record.
mispar: A number or count
מִסְפָּר
This branch preserves the root’s sense of reckoning, which also lives in recounting or telling.
חֻקָּי
ḥuqqay
GROWS FROM
חָקַק
ḥaqaq
To cut in, engrave, or mark out.
The word for “statutes” grows from a root of marking or engraving. God’s instruction is pictured as something with a defined shape, not merely words available to repeat.
ALSO GROWS
ḥoq: A statute, decree, or prescribed portion
חֹק
This related noun names what is marked out or appointed, giving the statutes a sense of defined form.
meḥoqeq: A lawgiver or ruler
מְחוֹקֵק
This branch connects the act of marking or decreeing with the one who establishes the instruction.
THE PATTERN
Sacred speech becomes self-contradictory when the speaker’s conduct refuses the truth the mouth names.
And the Lord says, Because this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips give me weight, but their heart has gone far from me, and their awe of me is a command of men, trained.Therefore you who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who cry out not to steal, do you steal?But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
You shall not lift the name of the LORD your God into emptiness, for the LORD will not clear him who lifts his name into emptiness.Both verses use נשָׂא (nasaʾ), “to lift, carry, or bear”: here the covenant is borne on the mouth, and there the name is borne. Since a name carries nature, the command reaches the nature a mouth represents, not only the sound it utters.
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