What Does Psalm 64:3 Mean?
Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even the bitter word.
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
Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words:THE KEY
The tongue is not merely speaking here; it is honed like a blade and aimed like an arrow.
THE MEANING
This verse describes speech shaped into a weapon: the tongue is honed, the words are aimed, and bitterness is what they carry. It names verbal harm as something with an edge and a target, even when the wound cannot be seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that speech leaves no wound collapses here: the tongue is sharpened, the arrow aimed, and bitterness carried into the hearer.
THE ROOT
שננו
shinnenu
GROWS FROM
שׁנן
shanan
To sharpen or hone; the same root also carries the sense of sharpening through repetition.
“sharpen” in this verse is shinnenu. The tongue is described as deliberately sharpened, not merely active. The same root can describe diligent teaching, so its image holds both a blade honed for harm and words pressed firmly into memory.
ALSO GROWS
shanan: Sharpen, whet.
שָׁנָן
This is the sharpening action behind the verse’s image of a tongue honed like a sword.
veshinnantam: Teach them diligently; literally, sharpen or impress them.
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם
In Deuteronomy 6:7, the same root describes instruction sharpened through repetition, revealing how words can be honed into either a wound or lasting teaching.
מַר
mar
GROWS FROM
מרר
marar
To be bitter or to make bitter.
“the bitter word” in this verse is mar. Mar names bitterness as something tasted and endured, not just a judgment about someone’s tone. Here that quality travels in speech, giving the words the force of an experienced bitterness.
ALSO GROWS
merorim: Bitter herbs.
מְרֹרִים
The same root names bitterness as a taste, giving “bitter words” a tangible, sensory quality.
hemar: Made bitter; dealt bitterly.
הֵמַר
In Ruth 1:20, the root describes lived anguish, showing how bitterness can name an experience as well as a taste.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays destructive speech as a force that pierces, burns, and reaches the hearer with real effect.
My living soul is among lions; I lie down among the blazing ones, sons of humankind, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and whose tongue is a sharp sword.Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow, and it speaks deceit. One speaks wholeness to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he sets his ambush.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.The Hebrew verb translated “teach them diligently” comes from the same שׁנן (shanan), meaning “sharpen,” as “whet” in Psalm 64:3. The shared root shows words being honed through repetition: here they cut like a weapon; there they are pressed into memory as instruction.
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