What Does Psalm 55:10 Mean?
Day and night they circle it upon its walls, and crookedness and toil are in its midst.
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
Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.THE KEY
The verse maps harm as both an unending circuit around the walls and a settled presence in the center.
THE MEANING
This verse gives language to life under sustained pressure: danger circles the boundary day and night, while crookedness and grinding trouble occupy the center. It describes a whole environment formed by harm, not a single bad moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A guarded boundary does not guarantee a safe center.
THE ROOT
יְסוֹבְבוּהָ
yesovevuha
GROWS FROM
סבב
to turn, circle, or surround
The Hebrew verb comes from סבב, to circle or surround. With “day and night,” the walls are held in a recurring circuit; the pressure has no interval.
ALSO GROWS
saviv: around; surrounding
סָבִיב
The same root makes the verse’s circling movement explicit.
sevivot: surroundings; the regions around
סְבִיבוֹת
This branch keeps attention on the space encircling the city.
בְּקִרְבָּהּ
bəqirbāh
GROWS FROM
קרב
to approach or come near; the related noun קֶרֶב means inner part or midst
The word translated “midst” belongs to a root family that also carries nearness and approach. The trouble is located in the interior, at the place closest to the life of the city.
ALSO GROWS
qarov: near
קָרוֹב
This branch makes the nearness contained in the root audible beside “midst.”
qarav: to draw near; approach
קָרַב
This branch links the inner place to movement toward what is near.
qorban: drawing near
קָרְבָּן
This branch carries the same root’s sense of approach into the language of coming near.
עָמָל
ʿāmāl
GROWS FROM
עמל
to toil; labor that becomes trouble or hardship
“Sorrow” here also carries the texture of toil: trouble that weighs on a place like burdensome work. The root lets the verse hold both distress and the exhausting labor of bearing it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmal: to labor; toil
עָמַל
The verb shows the effort and burden carried within the trouble.
ʿāmēl: one who toils; laboring
עָמֵל
This related form gives the trouble a human face: someone made to carry the labor.
THE PATTERN
Harm can circle a community’s boundaries without pause while also taking hold at its inward center.
The wicked walk all around, when the lightest of the children of humankind are lifted high.As a well keeps its waters cold, so she keeps her harm cold. Violence and ravaging are heard in her; before my face continually are sickness and blows.For from within, out of the heart of men, come evil weighings, fornications, thefts, murders,THE THREAD
His mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression; under his tongue are toil and emptiness.Psalm 10:7 uses the same Hebrew pair, אָוֶן (aven) and עָמָל (amal), rendered here as “mischief” and “sorrow.” There they lie under the tongue; here they occupy the city’s center, linking hidden speech with the trouble filling a place.
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