What Does Psalm 6:8 Mean?
Turn aside from me, all you workers of crookedness; for the LORD hears the voice of my weeping.
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
Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD hath heard the voice of my weeping.THE KEY
Your weeping is not the verse’s last word: once it is heard, harm is told to leave.
THE MEANING
Your weeping has a voice, and the LORD hears it. In that hearing, those who work evil are told to depart from you; the verse holds grief and a firm boundary together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your grief goes unheard and that those who harm you must remain close.
THE ROOT
שָׁמַע
shāmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, or heed.
“hears” in this verse is shāmaʿ. English “heard” can sound like passive reception, but this root also carries listening and heeding. The verse places that attentive hearing beside a command for harm to leave, making the response visible.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear; listen.
שְׁמַע
The familiar imperative comes from the same root, showing that hearing can carry the sense of attending to what is heard.
shemuʿah: A report; news that is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows the root extending from hearing itself to what reaches someone through hearing.
בְּכִי
bekhî
GROWS FROM
בכה
b-k-h
To weep.
The verse calls it the “voice of my weeping,” giving grief a sound that can be heard. The root keeps the act of weeping inside the noun: this is not merely a feeling, but grief expressed aloud.
ALSO GROWS
bākāh: To weep.
בָּכָה
The verb names the act held within the verse’s word for weeping.
bōḵeh: One who weeps; weeping.
בֹּכֶה
This form keeps the grief embodied in the person who gives it voice.
THE PATTERN
When God hears suffering, the response confronts the force causing it.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.“Heareth” comes from the same Hebrew root, שמע (shamaʿ), as “hath heard” in this verse. Psalm 34:17 makes the movement explicit: the cry is heard, and deliverance follows.
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