What Does Psalm 58:3 Mean?
The wicked turn aside from the womb; they wander from the belly, speaking lies.
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
The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.THE KEY
The lie is the audible end of an older estrangement: the mouth speaks what the life has already wandered into.
THE MEANING
The verse places a stark claim before you: the wicked are estranged from the womb, go astray from the beginning, and speak lies. Its sequence makes false speech the audible expression of a life already disoriented.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that lying is merely a momentary speech failure: here the lie grows from a deeper estrangement that has already become a way of wandering.
THE ROOT
זֹרוּ
zoru
GROWS FROM
זור
zûr
To be a stranger, turn aside, or become estranged.
“turn aside” in this verse is zoru. The English word hides the kinship with זָר (zar), “stranger”: estrangement is a state of living as an outsider, not merely doing something wrong. The verse says that this dislocation reaches back to the womb.
ALSO GROWS
zar: A stranger or outsider.
זָר
This branch makes estrangement a condition of strangerhood: being outside relation.
zûr: To turn aside or become estranged.
זוּר
This verb gives the verse’s estrangement a movement: a life turns away before it wanders.
תָּעוּ
ta'u
GROWS FROM
תעה
ta'ah
To wander, err, or lose the way.
“wander” in this verse is ta'u. The verse moves from estrangement into motion: the person does not only stand apart but wanders. This same root can describe someone who errs, making the lost way a condition a person inhabits.
ALSO GROWS
to'eh: One who wanders or goes astray.
תֹּעֶה
The root can name the person by the movement itself: a wanderer.
ta'inu: We have gone astray.
תָּעִינוּ
Isaiah 53:6 uses this form for a shared wandering, showing the root can describe a path people recognize in themselves.
כָזָב
kazav
GROWS FROM
כזב
k-z-b
To lie, prove false, or fail.
“lies” in this verse is kazav. In this root, a lie is not only an untrue sentence; it is something that fails to hold or deliver. The same root names a stream that fails, so falsehood is like a source that promises water and runs dry.
ALSO GROWS
kazav: To lie, deceive, or prove false.
כָּזַב
The verb carries the lie from a spoken claim into the deeper idea of something that cannot be trusted to hold true.
akhzav: A failing brook or stream that runs dry.
אַכְזָב
Jeremiah 15:18 uses this related form for a source that disappoints, linking falsehood with what promises nourishment but fails to give it.
THE PATTERN
Speech gives outward form to the inward condition a person carries.
Lying lips make the LORD recoil, but those who work in trust are his delight.A good human brings out good from the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human brings out evil from the evil treasure of the heart, for from the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.But what comes out of the mouth comes forth from the heart, and that makes a person common.THE THREAD
Do the ones who plow evil not wander? But faithful love and truth are for the ones who plow good.Proverbs uses the same Hebrew root תעה (ta’ah, to wander or err) that Psalm 58:3 uses for “go astray.” The shared word links a person’s direction with the path they take: devising evil is already a form of wandering.
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