What Does Psalm 59:7 Mean?
Look, they gush out of their mouths; swords are in their lips. For who, they say, hears?
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
Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear?THE KEY
The mouths are not merely carrying swords: their speech itself gushes out as a weapon.
THE MEANING
The verse names the moment speech erupts already sharpened: the blade is at the lips. The question “who hears?” makes the speakers’ presumed invisibility part of the threat; the violence is audible in the words themselves.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The claim that words become harmless when no one is listening is undone: the blade is already present in the speech.
THE ROOT
יַבִּיעוּן
yabbi'un
GROWS FROM
נבע
n-b-ʿ
To gush or bubble forth.
“gush out of” in this verse is yabbi'un. English makes “belch” sound like a bodily noise, but the Hebrew verb pictures speech surging out. Proverbs uses this same root for a flowing brook of wisdom, revealing that what pours from a mouth can carry very different force.
ALSO GROWS
novea: Flowing or gushing forth.
נֹבֵעַ
In Proverbs 18:4, this form describes a flowing brook of wisdom, showing that the root can picture speech or wisdom pouring out.
yabbi'a: Gushes forth or utters.
יַבִּיעַ
Psalm 19:2 uses this form for day pouring forth speech, giving the root’s image of utterance without the threat of a blade.
שִׂפְתוֹתֵיהֶם
siftoteihem
GROWS FROM
שׂפה
ś-p-h
Lip; by extension, an edge or boundary.
“lips” in this verse is siftoteihem. The Hebrew word שָׂפָה (safah) can mean both “lip” and “language,” and it also names a shore, the edge of the sea. Here, the boundary where speech crosses out of the mouth carries the image of a sword’s edge.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip or language.
שָׂפָה
The same word holds the mouth’s edge and the speech that passes across it, binding the lips to the words they release.
sefat hayam: Seashore, literally “the lip of the sea.”
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
The word’s use for a shore preserves its sense of an edge, illuminating how the lips are the boundary where speech enters the world.
THE PATTERN
Speech carries the force within it: what leaves the mouth can cut like a blade and expose its source.
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.But the tongue no one is able to tame; it is an evil that will not stand still, full of death-bearing venom.THE THREAD
Deep waters, the words of a man's mouth; a springing brook, the wellspring of wisdom.The Hebrew root נבע (n-b-ʿ), meaning “gush or flow forth,” appears here in “belch out” and in Proverbs’ נֹבֵעַ (novea), “flowing forth.” There, the outflow is wisdom’s brook; here, it erupts beside swords, showing how speech flowing from within can carry opposite force.
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