What Does Psalm 74:15 Mean?
You split the spring and the stream; you dry up the steady rivers.
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 didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.THE KEY
The same “Thou” opens the water’s source and dries its current, placing emergence and disappearance under one authority.
THE MEANING
The forces that sustain or overwhelm you remain within God’s reach. The one who opens a source also dries a mighty current; neither abundance nor destructive force stands beyond divine authority.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that the forces feeding or flooding your life are self-governing and permanent.
THE ROOT
בָּקַעְתָּ
bāqaʿtā
GROWS FROM
בקע
b-q-ʿ
To split open, cleave, or break through.
“split” in this verse is bāqaʿtā. This root also describes water being divided and the deep bursting open. English “cleave” can sound like separation alone, but the root carries the force of breaking open a barrier so what was contained can surge through.
ALSO GROWS
bāqaʿ: To split or break open
בָּקַע
The same verb describes the divided waters in Exodus 14:21, linking this opened source with a path through water.
nibqəʿū: They burst open
נִבְקְעוּ
This form describes the fountains of the deep bursting open in Genesis 7:11, where an opened source becomes an overwhelming flood.
הוֹבַשְׁתָּ
hôvaštā
GROWS FROM
יבשׁ
y-b-sh
To dry out or wither.
“dry up” in this verse is hôvaštā. The same root names both drying and dry land. The river’s power does not merely lessen; its channel changes state, becoming ground where water had been.
ALSO GROWS
yāvēš: Dry or withered
יָבֵשׁ
This form holds the change from flowing, living water to a state without moisture.
yabbāšāh: Dry land
יַבָּשָׁה
The shared root links a dried watercourse with the ground exposed when water withdraws.
מַעְיָן
maʿyan
GROWS FROM
עין
ʿ-y-n
Eye; also a spring or source of water.
The word for fountain belongs to the same word family as “eye,” giving the spring the image of a point where hidden water comes into view. Beside the split-open verb, the line pictures a source revealed and mighty channels made dry.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye
עַיִן
The shared word family links the visible eye with a water source, both understood as places where something emerges.
maʿyan: Spring or fountain
מַעְיָן
This is the word used here, naming the source that the verse says is split open.
THE PATTERN
Waters that sustain, threaten, or endure remain subject to the same authority that opens and closes their flow.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.Behold, he holds back the waters, and they dry up; he sends them out, and they turn the earth over.And waking, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Be silent. Be muzzled. And the wind wore itself out, and a great calm came.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.The verb for “divided” shares the split-open root with “cleave” in Psalm 74:15, while “dry land” shares the drying root with “driedst up.” Exodus makes the pairing visible: water opens into a passage, and dry ground appears.
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