What Does Psalm 68:13 Mean?
Though you lie down among the hearthstones, you are as the wings of a dove plated with silver, and her feathers with greenish gold.
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
Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.THE KEY
The dove’s silvered wings appear beside the pots: the place you lie in does not contain the whole of what you are.
THE MEANING
You may lie among the pots, yet the verse places you beside a dove whose wings are covered in silver and whose feathers gleam with gold. Your present setting and the radiance in this image occupy the same frame; the ordinary place does not exhaust what can be seen of you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that being among the pots makes you fit only for a diminished life.
THE ROOT
כְּנָפֵי
kanfei
GROWS FROM
כָּנָף
k-n-p
Wing; also an edge, corner, or extremity.
The Hebrew word for a bird’s wing also names the edge of a garment and the extremity of a land. The image reaches beyond feathers: the dove’s wings are an outward edge, a covering surface where the silver appears.
ALSO GROWS
Wing: A bird’s wing.
כָּנָף
This is the verse’s direct image: the silver covers the dove’s wings.
kanaph: The edge or corner of a garment; an extremity.
כָּנָף
This shared word lets the wing carry the sense of an extending edge or covering, not only a part of a bird.
נֶחְפָּה
nechpah
GROWS FROM
חָפָה
ḥ-p-h
To cover or overlay.
“plated” in this verse is nechpah. The verb pictures the dove’s wings under an overlay of silver; its splendor is shown as a covering across what is already there. A branch of the same root, chuppah, names a canopy, bringing shelter alongside adornment.
ALSO GROWS
chaphah: To cover or overlay.
חָפָה
This is the action expressed by “covered with silver.”
Canopy: A canopy or covering.
חֻפָּה
This branch lets the covering image hold shelter as well as visible adornment.
THE PATTERN
The wing images a sheltering reach that carries or gathers life close.
You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you on the wings of eagles, and brought you to myself.He covers you with his feathers, and beneath his wings you take shelter; his steadiness is your shield and your encircling buckler.O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!THE THREAD
He covers you with his feathers, and beneath his wings you take shelter; his steadiness is your shield and your encircling buckler.The same Hebrew word כָּנָף (kanaph, wing or edge) names the dove’s wings here and the sheltering wings in Psalm 91. Psalm 91 makes explicit the refuge that Psalm 68’s gleaming image leaves unstated: the wing can be both radiant and sheltering.
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