What Does Psalm 73:20 Mean?
As a dream at waking, O Lord, when you rouse, you spurn their shadow.
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
As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.THE KEY
The LORD’s awakening is a rousing: the image that seemed solid in the dream becomes an object of contempt.
THE MEANING
What seems to dominate now can still be as insubstantial as a dream at waking. When the LORD is roused, that image is despised; the verse keeps the force of that judgment sharp. Its present power carries no promise of permanence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a dominant, frightening image must be lasting reality: when the LORD rouses, that image is despised.
THE ROOT
בָּעִיר
bāʿîr
GROWS FROM
ע־ו־ר
ʿ-w-r
To wake, stir, or rouse.
“rouse” in this verse is bāʿîr. This form carries the sense of stirring or rousing, so the LORD’s awakening is pictured as active response. The verse’s image does not merely fade from view; it meets the sharp judgment of contempt.
ALSO GROWS
ʿūrāh: Awake; rouse yourself (Psalm 7:6).
עוּרָה
The same root joins awakening with judgment, illuminating the force of the LORD’s rousing here.
ʿūrî: Awake! (Isaiah 51:9).
עוּרִי
This call to awake also carries the force of stirring into action.
צַלְמָם
ṣalmām
GROWS FROM
צ־ל־ם
ṣ-l-m
Image, likeness, or formed representation.
“shadow” in this verse is ṣalmām. The word names a formed likeness or representation: Scripture uses it for humanity made in God’s image and for carved images. Here, “their image” is the visible form that can vanish like a dream and still be held in contempt.
ALSO GROWS
tselem: Image or likeness (Genesis 1:26).
צֶלֶם
The same word can name a likeness that reflects what is made in God’s image.
tsalmê: Images; rendered “molten images” (Numbers 33:52).
צַלְמֵי
The word also names formed objects of devotion, showing how an image can claim significance without being the reality it represents.
THE PATTERN
Waking separates what only looks substantial from what can truly satisfy and endure.
It will be as when a hungry man dreams that he eats, and wakes, and his living soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreams that he drinks, and wakes, and behold, he is faint, and his living soul craves; so will be the crowd of all the nations that muster against Mount Zion.As for me, I gaze upon your face in alignment; I am filled when I wake with your form.And the world is passing away, and its craving with it, but the one who does the will of God remains for the ages.THE THREAD
Arise, O LORD, in the burning of your anger, and lift yourself up because of the overflowing of my pressing ones, and rouse for me to the judgment you have commanded.“Awake” here and the LORD’s “awakest” in Psalm 73:20 share the Hebrew root ע־ו־ר (ʿ-w-r), meaning to wake or rouse. Psalm 7:6 makes the force of that rousing explicit: it is bound to judgment, the moment when the enemy’s image is seen for what it is.
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