What Does Psalm 68:20 Mean?
Our God is the God of deliverances, and to the LORD, the Lord, belong the exits from death.
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
He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto GOD the Lord belong the issues from death.THE KEY
The verse calls death a place with exits, and says those exits belong to God.
THE MEANING
Your encounter with death is not beyond the reach of God’s deliverance: God is the God of deliverances, and the exits from death belong to the Lord. The verse places both deliverance and the way out from death within God’s keeping now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Death is a sealed boundary beyond which no way out can belong to God.
THE ROOT
לְמוֹשָׁעוֹת
le-moshaʿot
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ע
y-sh-ʿ
Deliverance: bringing out of constriction into spaciousness.
The Hebrew word מוֹשָׁעוֹת (moshaʿot, deliverances) is plural, set beside the plural תּוֹצָאוֹת (totsaʿot, exits). The verse pairs deliverances with exits, holding the way out from death within God’s keeping.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuʿah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This branch shares the seed of the verse’s word for deliverances, showing salvation as being brought out.
moshiaʿ: Deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This branch names the one who brings deliverance; here, God is named as its source.
תּוֹצָאוֹת
totsaʿot
GROWS FROM
י־צ־א
y-ts-ʾ
To go out, come forth, or emerge.
What KJV renders “issues” is תּוֹצָאוֹת (totsaʿot), meaning exits or outgoings. Its root is the verb “to go out,” so the line names exits from death as belonging to the Lord.
ALSO GROWS
yatsaʾ: To go out or emerge
יָצָא
This verb is the seed behind “issues,” making the verse’s language of exits concrete.
motsaʾ: An exit, going out, or source
מוֹצָא
This related form shows how the root can name both a way out and the point something comes from.
THE PATTERN
God’s deliverance appears as an opening out from death’s hold, with the way out belonging to God.
He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.From the hand of the grave I will ransom them; from death I will buy them back. Death, I will be your plague; grave, I will be your destruction. Relenting is hidden from my eyes.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.THE THREAD
He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.“Brought them out” translates a form of יצא (yatsaʾ), the same root behind תּוֹצָאוֹת (totsaʿot), “issues” or exits. Psalm 107:14 shows that root in motion: God brings people out of darkness and death’s shadow.
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