What Does Psalm 71:15 Mean?
My mouth recounts your alignment and your deliverance all the day, for I do not know their count.
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
My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof.THE KEY
The Hebrew uses the same root for “shew forth” and “numbers”: your mouth can recount deliverance while admitting it cannot count it.
THE MEANING
Your mouth keeps telling of God’s alignment and deliverance through the day, even while you do not know their full number. What exceeds your grasp remains speakable without becoming a complete inventory.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that you must understand the full measure of deliverance before you can name it.
THE ROOT
יְסַפֵּר
yesapper
GROWS FROM
ס־פ־ר
to count or recount
The verb translated “shew forth” comes from a root that carries both telling and counting. The verse echoes that root in “numbers,” holding together a mouth that recounts and a mind that cannot count the measure.
ALSO GROWS
sippur: account, story
סִפּוּר
A telling gives an account, as the mouth does here.
mispar: number
מִסְפָּר
This branch shares its root with the verse’s word for the uncounted measure.
תְּשׁוּעָתֶךָ
teshu‘atecha
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ע
to deliver, bringing from constriction into spaciousness
“your deliverance” in this verse is teshu‘atecha. The word names deliverance as movement out of constriction and into room. Set beside the line’s uncountable numbers, it suggests that deliverance is not a quantity the speaker can finish measuring.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun names the same root’s movement into freedom.
moshia: deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This branch names the one who brings deliverance.
צִדְקָתֶךָ
tsidqatecha
GROWS FROM
צ־ד־ק
what is right, just, or aligned
“your alignment” in this verse is tsidqatecha. The verse places alignment alongside deliverance: what the mouth recounts is both God’s rightness and God’s bringing out. The English can make these sound like separate abstractions; here they are held together in one testimony.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: justice, what is right
צֶדֶק
It carries the root’s sense of rightness that the verse names.
tsaddiq: one who is righteous or aligned
צַדִּיק
This branch describes a person in relation to the alignment being recounted.
THE PATTERN
What exceeds counting can still be declared day after day.
Many are the works you make, O LORD my God, the wonders, and your plans toward us. They cannot be laid in rows before you. If I would recount them and speak them, they are more than can be numbered.Sing to the LORD; bless his name; bring good news of his deliverance from day to day.But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.The Hebrew verb translated “declare” is מְסַפְּרִים (mesapperim, recount), from the same root ספר as “shew forth” here. The image widens: the mouth joins a creation already recounting what cannot be exhausted.
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