What Does Psalm 55:15 Mean?
Let death come upon them, and let them go down living into Sheol, for evil is in their lodgings, and among them.
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
Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.THE KEY
The curse asks for the living to be dragged into Sheol: “quick” keeps life and the realm of death colliding in the same image.
THE MEANING
The verse voices a severe wish for death to overtake people while they are still alive, because evil occupies both their dwellings and their inner midst. “Hell” renders Sheol, the grave or realm of the dead; “quick” means alive. The curse keeps its full violence in view.
THE ROOT
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live; to remain alive or be revived.
The word means “alive,” not “quickly,” so the verse pictures people descending into Sheol while still living. The life-word and the realm of the dead meet in one jarring image.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living, alive
חַי
It shares the same life-root as the people pictured descending alive.
ḥāyāh: To live
חָיָה
The verb makes explicit the life that the verse holds beside Sheol.
heḥĕyāh: To revive, keep alive
הֶחֱיָה
This causative form shows the root can describe life being sustained or restored.
מָוֶת
māvet
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
To die; death.
The root joins death as a state with dying as an action. Here death is made active: it seizes, and the living are pictured going down.
ALSO GROWS
mēt: Dead
מֵת
This describes the state associated with the death named in the verse.
mōt: To die, dying
מוֹת
The verbal form makes death a process, matching the verse’s forceful movement downward.
yāmût: He will die
יָמוּת
This form carries the same root into a direct statement of dying.
רָעוֹת
raʿot
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or harmful; to do evil.
“evil” in this verse is raʿot. The Hebrew is plural: “evils” or “harms.” Set inside their dwellings and among them, the word gives wickedness the concrete force of harm lodged within their lives.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil
רַע
This adjective shares the root behind the plural “evils” in the verse.
raʿāh: Evil, harm
רָעָה
This form carries the same root’s sense of harmful wrong.
hērēaʿ: To do harm, act wickedly
הֵרֵעַ
This verbal form shows the root can name harmful action, not only a condition.
THE PATTERN
The harm people set in motion can turn back upon them as their own downfall.
He digs a pit and hollows it out, and falls into the pit he works.Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.Then Jesus said to him, Turn your sword back to its place, for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.THE THREAD
Let us swallow them living, as the grave does, and whole, as those who go down into the cistern.Proverbs uses the same word for “alive” beside Sheol, here rendered “the grave,” as Psalm 55:15. In Proverbs, violent people speak of swallowing others alive; the psalm turns that terrifying descent back upon them.
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