What Does Psalm 50:17 Mean?
And you hate straightening, and throw my words behind 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
Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.THE KEY
The verse pictures rejection as a direction: God’s words are thrown behind the one who hears them.
THE MEANING
The verse names a split visible now: instruction comes near, while the words are pushed behind you. Refusal is more than disagreement; it places those words outside your attention and direction. The words remain present even when you turn away from what they expose.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you can keep God’s words near while refusing every correction they carry.
THE ROOT
וַתַּשְׁלֵךְ
vatashlekh
GROWS FROM
שלך
To throw, cast, or fling away.
“throw” in this verse is vatashlekh. The verb makes rejection spatial: the words are put behind the person, out of view. The same root can describe placing a burden upon the LORD, so the direction of the casting matters.
ALSO GROWS
hashlekh: Cast your burden, as in Psalm 55:22.
הַשְׁלֵךְ
The same verb can place something toward the LORD; here the words are cast behind the hearer.
vayyashlekh: Moses cast the tree into the waters, as in Exodus 15:25.
וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ
The word describes an object being moved into a new place, making the rejection here an act of displacement.
מוּסָר
musar
GROWS FROM
יסר
To discipline, correct, or train.
“straightening” in this verse is musar. Musar is instruction that shapes through correction, not merely information. Hating it means refusing the shaping that comes with being corrected.
ALSO GROWS
yāsar: The verb for correcting or disciplining.
יָסַר
It shows the formative action inside the instruction the verse says is hated.
musar: The noun for discipline or instruction, also used in Proverbs 1:2.
מוּסָר
The same word can name wisdom’s instruction, making this refusal a rejection of correction that could teach.
דְּבָרַי
devarai
GROWS FROM
דבר
The root concerns speaking; the noun davar can mean a word or a matter.
English can make words sound like verbal packaging, but davar also means a matter or affair. Casting the words behind you therefore pushes their matter out of present attention.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: To speak or utter.
דִּבֵּר
It shows the spoken form of the same root as the words being cast away.
dāvar: A matter, thing, or affair.
דָּבָר
It reveals that the words carry a matter with them, not just sounds that can be dismissed.
THE PATTERN
Instruction shapes a person when received, while despising correction pushes its words out of view.
The awe of the LORD is the head of knowledge, but fools make light of wisdom and straightening.My son, do not spurn the straightening of the LORD, and do not tire of his reproof.All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for exposure, for straightening again, for the training in alignment.THE THREAD
Throw your load upon the LORD, and he holds you. He does not give the aligned one to totter for the ages.Both verses use the Hebrew root ש־ל־ך (shalakh, cast). In Psalm 50 the words are cast behind the hearer; here the burden is cast upon the LORD, revealing how the direction of the same act changes its meaning.
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