What Does Psalm 71:4 Mean?
My God, let me slip free from the hand of the restless, from the palm of the one who makes crookedness and the one who crushes.
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
Deliver me, O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.THE KEY
Deliverance here is being pulled out of another person’s grip.
THE MEANING
The prayer names the danger plainly: another person’s power is being used to harm, and the plea is to be pulled clear. “Out of the hand” is repeated, making deliverance concrete: no longer being under that person’s control.
THE ROOT
הַצִּילֵנִי
hatzileini
GROWS FROM
נצל
To snatch away, rescue, or strip away.
“Deliver me” in this verse is hatzileini. The verb carries a sense of being taken out of danger’s reach. Paired with the repeated image of a hand, deliverance is not abstract safety but removal from the power that holds someone.
ALSO GROWS
nitsal: A form of נצל (natsal) meaning to be rescued or escape.
נִצַּל
It makes clear that rescue means getting free of the danger’s hold.
venitzaltem: A form of נצל (natsal) used for stripping or taking away, as in Exodus 3:22.
וְנִצַּלְתֶּם
The same root can describe taking something out of another’s possession; here, the person being rescued is taken out of the oppressor’s reach.
THE PATTERN
Rescue removes a person from the power that holds them and carries them toward safety.
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.He snatches me from my strong enemy and from my haters, for they are too firm for me.And the Lord will bring me out of every evil work, and will deliver me into his heavenly governance; to whom let there be weight for the ages of the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
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.Exodus uses the same Hebrew verb, הַצִּיל (hatzil, “deliver”), and the same image of being brought out of a hand. The sentence pairs removal from that grip with being brought up into a good, large land: rescue opens into room to live.
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