What Does Psalm 58:7 Mean?
Let them melt like waters that run away; when he treads his bow, let them be as cut apart.
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 them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.THE KEY
The verse asks for both the threat and its arrow to lose their force: the danger flows away, and the weapon breaks before it can strike.
THE MEANING
This verse gives voice now to a fierce wish: those who threaten are swept away like water, and the violence poised to strike is cut apart. Its images are unsparing, the threat is meant to disappear, and the weapon to fail.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a threat’s momentum makes its impact inevitable.
THE ROOT
יִתְמֹלָלוּ
yitmolelu
GROWS FROM
מלל
m-l-l
To wither, crumble, or be worn down.
“cut in pieces” in this verse is yitmolelu. The word carries the sense of something losing its strength and coming apart. The arrow’s destruction echoes the quieter image of something withering: what is poised to strike already bears the shape of its collapse.
ALSO GROWS
yitmolelu: Be broken apart or crushed.
יִתְמֹלָלוּ
This is the form in the verse, where the thing pictured as cut to pieces loses its force.
yimmalel: Wither away.
יִמָּלֵל
Psalm 90:6 uses this form for grass that withers by evening, showing the same root in a quieter kind of collapse.
יִמָּאֲסוּ
yimma'asu
GROWS FROM
מאס
To reject, refuse, or spurn; here, to melt or disappear.
The verb translated “melt away” also carries the root sense of being refused or rejected. The threat loses substance and is cast off; disappearance and rejection meet in one word.
ALSO GROWS
ma'as: Reject, refuse, or spurn.
מָאַס
This basic verb gives the verse’s image of vanishing the additional shade of being refused.
nim'as: Rejected or despised.
נִמְאָס
This related form pictures what has been refused and no longer holds its place.
יִדְרֹךְ
yidroḵ
GROWS FROM
דרך
To tread, step, or press; used of preparing a bow.
“treads his bow” in this verse is yidroḵ. The bow’s preparation is expressed through a root of treading or pressing. That same root gives דֶּרֶךְ, a way or path, linking the arrow’s directed course with a walked course, the verse then pictures that force as broken.
ALSO GROWS
darakh: Tread, step, or press; also, draw or prepare a bow.
דָּרַךְ
The verse uses this verb in its image of the bow readied to launch arrows.
derekh: Way or path.
דֶּרֶךְ
This noun grows from the same root of treading, connecting a weapon’s trajectory with a course or way.
THE PATTERN
Violent power is not self-sustaining: what rushes forward can be scattered, and what is poised to strike can wither or break.
The nations shall crash like the roar of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be pursued like chaff of the mountains before the breath, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.In the morning it blossoms and fades; by evening it is pinched off and dries.For all flesh is as grass, and all its weight is as the blossom of grass. The grass dries, and the blossom falls.THE THREAD
In the morning it blossoms and fades; by evening it is pinched off and dries.The word יִתְמֹלָלוּ (yitmolelu), “be broken apart,” in Psalm 58:7 shares the root מלל with יִמָּלֵל (yimmalel), “wither away,” in Psalm 90:6. The same root joins an arrow’s breaking to grass’s fading: both lose the force they seemed to hold.
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