What Does Psalm 81:10 Mean?
I am the LORD your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Widen your mouth, and I will fill it.
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
I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.THE KEY
The mouth’s widening continues the exodus: the God who brings you out of constriction also makes room in you for fullness.
THE MEANING
The LORD brings you out of what constricts you and makes room within you now. You do not manufacture fullness; the verse holds your opened capacity and God’s filling together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that need must be hidden before it can be met: here, the open mouth is precisely the place God fills.
THE ROOT
הַרְחֵב
harḥēv
GROWS FROM
רחב
Be wide, become spacious (rāḥab).
“Widen your mouth” in this verse is harḥēv. The command uses the root of breadth and spaciousness: your mouth is to become a place with room to receive. After the LORD brings you out of constriction, this widening continues the movement toward fullness.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥāv: Wide, broad.
רָחָב
This adjective names the spacious quality that the command asks the mouth to take on.
merḥāv: A broad place, an expanse.
מֶרְחָב
The same root describes an open place, linking the widened mouth with a life made spacious.
הַמַּעַלְךָ
hammaʿăleḵā
GROWS FROM
עלה
Go up, ascend (ʿālāh).
“brought you up” in this verse is hammaʿăleḵā. The Hebrew pictures the LORD as bringing you up from Egypt. Deliverance carries the motion of ascent, so the widening that follows belongs to a movement already underway: out of constriction and into room.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālāh: Go up, ascend.
עָלָה
The basic verb makes the upward movement within “brought thee out” audible.
heʿĕlāh: Bring up, raise.
הֶעֱלָה
This causative form shares the verse’s image of being brought upward by another.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance moves from constriction into widened capacity, where fullness can be received.
He brings me out into a broad place; he pulls me loose, because he delights in me.Widen the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your dwellings stretch out. Do not hold back; lengthen your cords, and grip your pegs.O Corinthians, our mouth is open toward you, our heart is widened.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.“Large place” translates מֶרְחָב (merḥāv), from the same root רחב (rāḥab) as “open wide.” The word joins an opened mouth with a life brought out of distress into spaciousness.
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