What Does Psalm 7:14 Mean?
Behold, he writhes with crookedness, conceives toil, and gives birth to falsehood.
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
Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood.THE KEY
Falsehood is shown as the birth of what was carried and worked over inside, so the visible lie has a hidden gestation.
THE MEANING
You can see wrongdoing here as a process: it is carried inwardly, worked over, and finally given expression as deception. The lie is the visible result of what has been conceived; the verse makes that hidden-to-visible movement present now. What takes shape within can become something another person encounters.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A falsehood can seem like a disconnected slip with no relation to what is carried inside. This verse portrays it as an outcome with a gestation.
THE ROOT
וְיָלַד
we-yālad
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To bear, give birth, or beget.
“gives birth to” in this verse is we-yālad. The same root forms יֶלֶד (yeled), “child,” and תּוֹלְדוֹת (toledot), “generations” or “lineage.” The verse pictures falsehood as an outcome that belongs to a process: what is conceived and carried inwardly is what comes forth.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child or offspring.
יֶלֶד
A child is what has been brought forth; this root makes the verse’s final verb feel like a result, not an isolated event.
toledot: Generations or lineage.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The root can name what proceeds from what came before, echoing the verse’s movement from inward conception to outward result.
THE PATTERN
What is conceived inwardly takes outward form and can unfold into further consequences.
They conceive toil, and bring forth hollowness, and their belly makes deceit stand.None calls out for alignment, and none judges with firmness. Leaning their full weight upon the emptiness, they speak lies; they conceive toil and bring forth crookedness.Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.THE THREAD
They conceive toil, and bring forth hollowness, and their belly makes deceit stand.Job repeats the same Hebrew roots: הָרָה (harah, “conceive”) and יָלַד (yalad, “bear” or “bring forth”). Read beside it, Psalm 7:14’s falsehood is the outward result of an inwardly conceived process.
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