What Does Psalm 71:20 Mean?
You who show me many narrow places and evils, you turn me and make me live again; from the depths of the earth you turn and lift me up.
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
Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.THE KEY
The Hebrew names suffering as constriction, then answers it with two movements: life restored and the buried brought upward.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks into your present depth: the pressure is real, yet your life is being restored. You are brought up from what feels buried beneath the earth; descent does not get the final movement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once you have fallen too deep, restoration can no longer reach you.
THE ROOT
צָרוֹת
tsarot
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind, press, or bring into distress.
The Hebrew word for troubles carries the sense of being pressed into a narrow place. That makes the verse’s next movements strikingly concrete: life is restored, and the one below is brought upward.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight, or constricted.
צַר
It gives the troubles a shape: they press life into narrowness.
metsar: A strait or narrow place.
מֵצַר
It echoes the verse’s movement from constriction toward release and renewed life.
תְּחַיֵּנִי
teḥayyēnî
GROWS FROM
חיה
chayah
To live, or to cause to live.
“make me live again” in this verse is teḥayyēnî. The Hebrew says, in effect, “you will make me live.” The verse presents revival as life returning from within the depth, not as a quality added from outside.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living, alive.
חַי
The same root names the life that is restored here.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This branch makes clear that “quicken” belongs to the language of living, not merely being stirred or hurried.
תַּעֲלֵנִי
taʿalēnî
GROWS FROM
עלה
To go up, ascend, or cause to ascend.
“lift me up” in this verse is taʿalēnî. The verse pairs being made alive with being brought up from the earth’s depths. Its Hebrew verb names an ascent: what is beneath is not beyond the reach of upward movement.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalah: To go up or ascend.
עָלָה
It is the same movement expressed in “bring me up.”
maʿaleh: An ascent or rising place.
מַעֲלֶה
It preserves the upward direction at the heart of the verse.
THE PATTERN
Renewal meets the full descent with life restored and the buried raised upward.
O LORD, you brought up my living soul from Sheol. You kept me alive from those who go down into the pit.Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.Even when we were dead in our stumbles, he made us alive together with the Anointed One, by favor you have been delivered. And he raised us up together and seated us together in the places of the heavens, in the Anointed One, Jesus.THE THREAD
I went down to the broken places of the mountains; the earth, with its bars, closed about me for the ages. Yet you brought up my living soul from the pit, O LORD my God.Jonah uses the same root, עָלָה (ʿalah, “to go up”), in “brought up my life.” The shared verb makes the ascent here more than a change of location: it names life returning from beneath.
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