What Does Psalm 68:31 Mean?
Princes come out of Egypt; Kush runs to stretch out her hands to God.
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
Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.THE KEY
The two narrows do not seal the way: nobles come out of Egypt while Cush’s hands are already running toward God.
THE MEANING
The verse holds an exit and a reach in the same present: what is enclosed in Mitzrayim comes out, and Cush’s hands hurry toward God. Constriction and distance do not close the way; movement toward God crosses both.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a life shaped by constriction is too far away to reach God.
THE ROOT
תָּרִיץ
tārîṣ
GROWS FROM
רוץ
r-w-ṣ
Run, hurry, move swiftly.
“runs to stretch out” in this verse is tārîṣ. The verb behind “stretch out” pictures Cush’s hands running toward God. English gives a gesture; Hebrew gives urgency and motion, a reach already in transit.
ALSO GROWS
rāṣ: Runner; one who runs.
רָץ
The reaching hands take on the movement of a runner, not a still or distant posture.
mērōṣ: A race or course of running.
מֵרוֹץ
This branch keeps the verse’s reach inside a larger image of motion toward a destination.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צ־ר־ר
ṣ-r-r
Press in, bind, constrict; related forms describe narrowness and distress.
Mitzrayim carries the image of the narrows, heard as a twofold constriction. Here Egypt is more than a location: its name holds the narrowing image, while the verse makes departure imaginable from within it.
ALSO GROWS
mēṣar: A narrow place, strait, or tight spot.
מֵצַר
This branch makes the constriction carried by Mitzrayim audible in the verse’s image of coming out.
ṣārāh: Distress or trouble.
צָרָה
The same constricting word-family links narrowness with the pressure experienced inside it.
THE PATTERN
The movement toward God crosses borders: peoples at every distance enter the same turning and worship.
All the ends of the earth remember and turn back to the LORD; all the families of the nations bow down before you.Whom the LORD of hosts will bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.And he arose and went; and behold, an Ethiopian eunuch, an official of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem to bow down.THE THREAD
I run the way of your commands, when you widen my heart.The Hebrew verb for “run” here shares the root רוץ (r-w-ṣ) with the verb rendered “stretch out” in Psalm 68:31. This psalm pairs running with an enlarged heart, opening Cush’s reaching hands as movement into spaciousness.
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