What Does Psalm 69:13 Mean?
But as for me, my prayer is to you, LORD, in a time of favor. O God, in the abundance of your faithful love, answer me, in the truth of your deliverance.
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
But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O LORD, in an acceptable time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation.THE KEY
The prayer names deliverance as true while it is still being sought, grounding the plea in faithful love before circumstances change.
THE MEANING
Your prayer reaches toward the LORD in a favorable moment, asking to be heard through abundant faithful love. You seek to be heard on the strength of God’s reliable deliverance even before the plea is answered. Need remains visible, but it is held within a love the verse presents as steady.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that need puts you beyond the reach of favor: the prayer is voiced in an acceptable time and appeals to abundant faithful love.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁעֶךָ
yishe'kha
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
To deliver, bringing someone out of constriction into spaciousness.
The root names being delivered, not salvation as a distant religious category. The speaker asks for God’s deliverance to become the truthful ground beneath this present plea.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
It names the rescue the speaker seeks.
moshia: deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
The same root can name the one who brings a person out, holding the action and its outcome together.
חַסְדֶּךָ
chasdekha
GROWS FROM
חסד
ḥ-s-d
Faithful, loyal love expressed in action.
The phrase “multitude of thy mercy” is abundant faithful love, not a passing feeling. The appeal is relational: the speaker asks to be heard within the character already named as God’s.
ALSO GROWS
chasid: a faithful or loyal one
חָסִיד
The root can describe a person shaped by the same loyalty expressed as faithful love.
chasidim: faithful or loyal ones
חֲסִידִים
The plural carries that quality into a community, showing faithful love as a lived relationship.
בֶּאֱמֶת
be'emet
GROWS FROM
אמן
ʾ-m-n
To be firm, reliable, or steady.
Truth here carries the sense of firmness, not only accuracy. The deliverance is presented as something steady enough to lean on while the speaker is still asking to be heard.
ALSO GROWS
amen: truly; firm or so be it
אָמֵן
The word affirms something as reliable and established.
emunah: steadfast trust, leaning one’s full weight on what is reliable
אֱמוּנָה
Its shared root connects truth’s firmness with the trust that rests on it.
THE PATTERN
God’s hearing meets distress by opening a way out of constriction.
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.Who brought us out of so great a death, and brings us out; in whom we hope that he will yet bring us out.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, In a time of favor I answered you, and in a day of deliverance I helped you. I will guard you, and give you as a covenant for the people, to make the earth stand, to hand down the emptied holdings.Isaiah repeats the same “acceptable time” language and pairs it with a day of deliverance. Psalm 69 asks to be heard; Isaiah joins hearing with help, making the hoped-for reply visible in the wording of the plea.
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