What Does Psalm 79:11 Mean?
Let the groaning of the bound one come before you; according to the greatness of your arm, leave over the children of death.
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
Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die;THE KEY
The prisoner’s groan arrives before God, and preservation means leaving a living remainder where death seemed final.
THE MEANING
Your groaning comes before God even from the place that binds you. The verse asks divine power to preserve those already counted among the dead, holding open life where the outcome seems settled.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a prisoner’s cry is too trapped or too late to reach God: being marked for death does not put a person beyond divine power.
THE ROOT
הוֹתֵר
hōtēr
GROWS FROM
יָתַר
yāṯar
Remain, be left over, or leave something remaining.
“leave over” in this verse is hōtēr. The Hebrew verb carries the sense of leaving someone over, letting a remnant remain. The plea asks that people already called “sons of death” still be among those left alive.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: A rest or remainder.
יֶתֶר
It brings the idea of preservation into focus: someone remains when loss seemed certain.
yitrôn: What exceeds or remains beyond the immediate measure.
יִתְרוֹן
The shared root holds a sense of what is left beyond expectation, echoing the plea for life beyond death’s apparent claim.
אֲנָקַת
ʾănāqat
GROWS FROM
אנק
ʾ-n-q
Groan; make a low cry of distress.
“groaning” in this verse is ʾănāqat. The word can carry the force of a groan, a cry of distress that can be heard. The verse pictures that sound coming before God, not disappearing inside the prisoner’s confinement.
ALSO GROWS
ʾānaq: To groan or utter a cry of distress.
אָנַק
It shows the sighing as an expressed sound of suffering.
ʾănāqāh: A groan or lament.
אֲנָקָה
This noun is the form behind the verse’s “sighing,” giving the quiet English word the depth of a lament.
אָסִיר
ʾāsîr
GROWS FROM
אָסַר
ʾāsar
Bind, tie, or confine.
“bound one” in this verse is ʾāsîr. The Hebrew word for prisoner grows from the act of binding: the person is one held in bonds. Yet the bond does not keep the groan from coming before God.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsar: To tie, bind, or imprison.
אָסַר
It reveals the physical image inside “prisoner”: someone held fast.
ʾāsûr: One who is bound or restricted.
אָסוּר
The shared root links the prisoner’s identity to the condition of confinement that the verse names.
THE PATTERN
A cry from confinement or oppression reaches God even when the sufferer cannot free themselves.
And in those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel groaned from the labor, and they cried out, and their outcry rose up to God from the labor.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
To hear and respond to the groaning of the bound one, to loose the children of death.Psalm 102:20 repeats the Hebrew pairing אֲנָקַת אָסִיר, “the groaning of the prisoner,” along with “the sons of death.” The shared wording reveals the same movement: the bound person’s groan is heard, and those facing death are opened toward release.
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