What Does Psalm 78:20 Mean?
Look, he struck the rock, and waters gushed out, and streams swept over. Can he also give bread? Or can he make ready flesh for his people?
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
Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people?THE KEY
The waters are already overflowing, yet the verse leaves bread and flesh as an unproved next step.
THE MEANING
The waters pour out after the rock is struck, while bread and flesh still stand as questions. You can witness one need met and still hold the next form of provision as unproven; the verse keeps both truths in view.
THE ROOT
צוּר
tsur
GROWS FROM
צוּר
tsur
The noun means rock; its related verbal family carries senses of binding, enclosing, or besieging, with compact firmness as the bridge.
The same root reaches from the compact rock to words for enclosure and siege. Here water breaks out from what looks sealed, joining constriction with release.
ALSO GROWS
tsur: Rock or cliff.
צוּר
The verse names the struck, hard place from which the waters come.
matsor: Siege or enclosure.
מָצוֹר
This related form brings the root’s sense of confinement into view beside the water breaking out.
יָכִין
yakhin
GROWS FROM
כּוּן
kun
To be firm or established; in a causative form, to establish, set in place, or prepare.
“make ready” in this verse is yakhin. The question about flesh uses a verb from a root of establishing and setting in place. The Hebrew carries the sense of preparing provision for the people, alongside the question of whether it can be given.
ALSO GROWS
hekin: Prepare or make ready.
הֵכִין
This causative form from the same root clarifies the sense of provision being prepared for the people.
makhon: A fixed place or foundation.
מָכוֹן
This noun from the same root carries the sense of something established in place.
THE PATTERN
Provision can meet distinct needs through forms that seem unavailable in the moment.
Then the LORD said to Moses, Look, I will rain bread for you from the heavens. The people shall go out and gather each day's portion on its day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my instruction or not.Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no silver, come, break open and eat. Yes, come, break open wine and milk, without silver and without price.And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he handed them out to the disciples, and the disciples to those who were reclining, and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.THE THREAD
Look, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb. You will strike the rock, and waters will come out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so before the eyes of the elders of Israel.The word צוּר (tsur, rock) recurs here: water comes from the hard place so the people may drink. That shared root sharpens the question in this verse: water has already broken out from the rock, yet food remains framed as beyond reach.
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