What Does Psalm 51:10 Mean?
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.
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
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.THE KEY
The verse asks for an inner act of creation: a clean heart and a breath made steady within.
THE MEANING
God creates a clean heart in you and renews a steadfast breath within. The request reaches beneath outward behavior to the inner source of life.
THE ROOT
בְּרָא
bera
GROWS FROM
ברא
bara
Create, bring forth.
“Create” in this verse is bera. This root speaks of creating and of creation itself. The request frames a clean heart as an act of creative making within, joined in the verse to ruach, the breath within.
ALSO GROWS
bore: Creator; one who creates.
בּוֹרֵא
The active form keeps the verse’s request connected to the act of creating.
beri'ah: Creation; a created thing.
בְּרִיאָה
This noun echoes the verse’s image of the heart as something brought forth anew.
חַדֵּשׁ
chaddesh
GROWS FROM
חדש
chadash
Make new, renew.
“renew” in this verse is chaddesh. The verb means to make new, and the same root names the new moon and the month. Renewal carries the sense of newness arriving again, so the request reaches toward fresh life within.
ALSO GROWS
chadash: New.
חָדָשׁ
This adjective makes explicit the newness carried inside the request to renew.
chodesh: New moon; month.
חֹדֶשׁ
The recurring month connects renewal with newness that arrives again.
נָכוֹן
nakhon
GROWS FROM
כון
kun
Be firm, established, or prepared.
“steady breath” in this verse is nakhon. Nakhon comes from the root for being firm or established. With ruach meaning breath, “a right spirit” also opens as an inner breath made steady and firmly set.
ALSO GROWS
hekin: Prepare; make ready or establish.
הֵכִין
This form shows the root’s sense of making something ready and established.
mekhonah: Base; stand or foundation.
מְכוֹנָה
The word for a firm base echoes the steadiness described by nakhon.
THE PATTERN
Renewal is an inward creative work whose life is continually sustained.
You send out your breath, and they are created; you renew the face of the ground.A new heart I will give you, and a new breath I will set within you. I will take the stone heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.Therefore we do not give out; though our outer person is worn through, yet our inner person is made new day after day.THE THREAD
You send out your breath, and they are created; you renew the face of the ground.The verse joins the same creation root, bara, with ruach, the breath sent forth, and the same renewal root, chadash. Here, as in you, creation and renewal move together through breath.
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