What Does Psalm 50:18 Mean?
When you see a thief, you take pleasure in him, and your portion is with adulterers.
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
When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.THE KEY
Complicity becomes more than approval: it becomes your share, the portion you hold with the adulterers.
THE MEANING
When you see theft and join yourself to it, you are not outside it; the verse names your place as a share with adulterers. Your company and your portion are joined in the same line, so participation reaches beyond the act you first notice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that seeing wrongdoing leaves you untouched by it: the verse locates complicity in joining yourself to it and sharing its company.
THE ROOT
חֶלְקְךָ
ḥelqekha
GROWS FROM
חלק
To divide or apportion; by extension, to share.
The Hebrew names the adulterers as the company in which your share lies. Participation is pictured as taking a portion alongside them, not merely being near them.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēleq: Portion, share, allotted part.
חֵלֶק
This is the noun within חֶלְקְךָ: your portion is with the adulterers.
ḥālaq: To divide, allot, or share out.
חָלַק
A portion is what is assigned in a division; the image makes alignment a matter of the share you take.
THE PATTERN
The company a person joins shapes the share and direction of life that person enters.
Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.The one who walks with the wise becomes wise; the one who grazes beside the dull is broken.Do not wander; bad company rots good habits.THE THREAD
The one who divides with a thief hates his own living soul; he hears the sworn curse and does not tell it.Psalm 50 names the adulterers as the place where your חֵלֶק (ḥēleq, share) lies; Proverbs uses the same root in חוֹלֵק (ḥōlēq, partner) for someone who shares with a thief. The repeated root makes participation concrete: joining another’s wrongdoing means taking a share with them.
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