What Does Psalm 62:3 Mean?
How long will you throw yourselves upon a man? All of you are crushed, like a leaning wall, like a fence thrust down.
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
How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? ye shall be slain all of you: as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence.THE KEY
The crowd plotting to topple one person is itself pictured as a wall already leaning and a fence already shoved out of place.
THE MEANING
When one person is made the target of a group, the verse names their intent as murder and pictures the group as a leaning wall and a fence already pushed aside. The violence remains explicit, while the image shows how little stability their force contains.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a crowd’s shared purpose makes it secure: the verse pictures that force as already out of place.
THE ROOT
הַדְּחוּיָה
ha-dechuyah
GROWS FROM
דחה
d-ḥ-h
to push, thrust, or drive away
“fence thrust down” in this verse is ha-dechuyah. The KJV’s “tottering” shows the fence’s instability; the Hebrew also pictures it as pushed aside. The same root describes a person being thrust toward a fall, so the image carries the force of a shove as well as the sight of collapse.
ALSO GROWS
dechitani: You pushed or thrust me.
דְּחִיתַנִי
This form appears in Psalm 118:13, linking the fence’s displacement to an attack directed at a person.
dachui: Something or someone driven out of place.
דָּחוּי
It makes the fence’s condition more than a wobble: it has already been displaced.
נָטוּי
natuy
GROWS FROM
נטה
n-ṭ-h
to stretch out, incline, or turn aside
“leaning wall” in this verse is natuy. The wall is not upright; it has inclined away from its line. The root also describes stretching something outward, so the image holds both extension and dangerous deviation in one motion.
ALSO GROWS
natah yad: To extend a hand outward.
נָטָה יָד
The same outward movement that reaches or extends a hand becomes the wall’s lean when it leaves its upright line.
noteh shamayim: The one who spreads the heavens out.
נֹטֶה שָׁמַיִם
The root can describe vast extension; here that extension has become a visible weakness in a wall.
THE PATTERN
A structure already leaning or badly built cannot hold when pressure comes against it.
Therefore this crookedness will be to you like a falling breach, bulging in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly, in a blink.Say to those who daub it with tasteless plaster, that it shall fall; there shall be a flooding rain, and you, great hailstones, shall fall; and a storm breath shall split it.And the rain came down, and the rivers came, and the winds breathed and fell against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.THE THREAD
You thrust, you thrust at me that I might fall, but the LORD helps me.The same דחה root links the fence pushed out of place with the speaker being thrust toward a fall. The verse then names another force in the scene: the shove does not settle the outcome, because the LORD helps.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us