What Does Psalm 78:43 Mean?
How he set his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan.
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
How he had wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan:THE KEY
The verse’s verb is “set”: the signs are placed inside Egypt’s constriction, making the narrow place itself a surface where what is hidden becomes legible.
THE MEANING
The verse places signs in Egypt; the Hebrew name מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, “the two constrictions”) gives the scene a second layer. Constriction becomes a place where what is hidden can be read, not a sealed place beyond disclosure. The reader’s own narrow place is not outside this pattern.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that constriction makes a place opaque and beyond disclosure dissolves here: the signs are set inside it, not outside it.
THE ROOT
בְּשׂוּמוֹ
bəśûmô
GROWS FROM
שׂום
שׂוּם (śûm): to put, set, or place.
The phrase KJV renders “had wrought” comes from שׂום (śûm), “to set or place,” so the action carries a spatial sense. The signs are placed in Egypt and the wonders in Zoan: what is usually hidden becomes readable within the scene itself.
ALSO GROWS
śûm: To set, put, or place.
שׂוּם
The basic verb holds the action plainly: positioning something in a place.
lāśûm: To set or place; the infinitive form.
לָשׂוּם
This form exposes the same placing action, linking the signs to the locations named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
What is hidden becomes legible when a sign is set inside the place where power is being lived.
And the LORD said to Moses, Come in to Pharaoh, for I have made heavy his heart and the heart of his servants, so that I may set these my signs in his midst.They set among them the words of his signs and wonders in the land of Ham.And truly Jesus did many other signs before the eyes of his disciples, which are not written in this book.THE THREAD
They set among them the words of his signs and wonders in the land of Ham.Psalm 105’s “shewed” also carries the setting root שׂום (śûm, “set or place”). Both verses place the signs within the scene: here in Egypt, there among the people in the land of Ham.
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