What Does Psalm 80:12 Mean?
Why do you break through her hedges, and all who pass by the way pluck her?
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
Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?THE KEY
The question turns on a breach: once the wall around the fruitful life is opened, passing hands can take what it holds.
THE MEANING
You see a fruitful life with its enclosing boundary torn down, so passersby can reach in and take what it bears. The question is addressed to God with the pain of exposure: why is the protection around this life gone? The fruit is still there; it is now open to plunder.
THE ROOT
פָּרַצְתָּ
pāraṣtā
GROWS FROM
פרץ
pāraṣ
To breach, break through, or burst out.
“break through” in this verse is pāraṣtā. The English phrase “broken down” can sound like simple removal; פָּרַץ (pāraṣ, “to breach or burst through”) carries the force of opening a boundary. The same root can describe breaking out or spreading, so here the opened wall leaves what it held exposed.
ALSO GROWS
perets: A breach or opening made by breaking through.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun makes the breach itself visible: the wall is not simply absent; it has been forced open.
pāraṣ: To break through, burst out, or spread.
פָּרַץ
The root can carry a sense of expansion, but here the opening exposes the vineyard to those passing by.
גְּדֵרֶיהָ
gederêha
GROWS FROM
גדר
gādar
To wall in, enclose, or make a boundary.
English “hedges” can sound like garden detail; גָּדַר (gādar, “to wall in or enclose”) names a made boundary that holds a space. Beside פָּרַץ (pāraṣ, “to breach”), that enclosure and its break form the verse’s central mechanism.
ALSO GROWS
gādar: To wall in, hedge, or enclose.
גָּדַר
The word points to a boundary made around the vineyard, the barrier whose breach the verse questions.
gederah: A fence, enclosure, or pen.
גְּדֵרָה
This branch shows the hedge as a boundary that holds something within; once it is broken, the fruit is reachable.
THE PATTERN
A fruitful space depends on its boundary; when that boundary is broken, what it holds becomes exposed.
Come, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be eaten up. I will break through its wall, and it shall be trampled.Whoever digs a pit falls into it, and whoever breaks through a wall, a serpent bites him.Hear another parable. There was a man, master of a house, who planted a vineyard and fenced it round about, and dug a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to those who work the soil, and went away to a far country.THE THREAD
Come, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be eaten up. I will break through its wall, and it shall be trampled.Isaiah 5:5 uses גָּדֵר (gāder, “hedge or enclosure”) for the vineyard’s boundary and פָּרַץ (pāraṣ, “breach or break through”) for its broken wall. It makes the cost of the broken boundary explicit: the vineyard is eaten and trampled.
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