What Does Psalm 81:6 Mean?
I turned his shoulder away from the load, and his palms passed clear of the basket.
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 removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots.THE KEY
Freedom moves in two directions at once: the burden leaves the shoulder, and the hands pass out of the pots.
THE MEANING
The verse presents release as something the body experiences: the burden leaves your shoulder, and your hands pass away from the pots. Release reaches both the weight you carry and the work of your hands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
What weighs on you is permanent and cannot be taken from you.
THE ROOT
הֲסִירוֹתִי
hasiroti
GROWS FROM
סור
to turn aside, depart, or remove
“turned away” in this verse is hasiroti. The verb makes release an act of removal: the burden departs from the shoulder. Alongside the hands passing out of the pots, the verse shows freedom as something being taken away and left behind.
ALSO GROWS
sur: to turn aside or depart
סוּר
The burden’s departure is a turning away from the body that carries it.
hesir: to remove or take away
הֵסִיר
This causative form from the same root gives the verse its concrete picture of a load being taken off.
סֵבֶל
sevel
GROWS FROM
סבל
to bear or carry a load
“load” in this verse is sevel. The word for burden grows from the act of carrying. The verse pictures release as the end of the shoulder’s relation to that weight.
ALSO GROWS
saval: to bear or carry a load
סָבַל
This verb shows the carrying that the lifted burden interrupts.
sabbal: a porter or bearer
סַבָּל
The same root names the one who carries, keeping the body and its load in one image.
תַּעֲבֹרְנָה
taʿavorna
GROWS FROM
עבר
to pass over or cross through
“passed clear of” in this verse is taʿavorna. Alongside the rescue conveyed by “delivered,” the Hebrew verb pictures the hands passing out of the pots. Release has a direction here: the hands cross beyond the vessels.
ALSO GROWS
avar: to pass over or cross
עָבַר
This verb gives the hands’ release the movement of crossing out.
ever: the region beyond or across
עֵבֶר
This related word carries the sense of reaching the other side, echoing the hands’ passage away from the pots.
THE PATTERN
Release becomes bodily and concrete: the load leaves the shoulder, and the hands move out of the vessels.
Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the loads of the Egyptians, and I will snatch you from their service, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.And in that day his burden will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be ruined because of the oil.Come to me, all you who toil and have been loaded down, and I will give you rest.THE THREAD
Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the loads of the Egyptians, and I will snatch you from their service, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.Psalm 81:6’s “burden” (סֵבֶל, sevel) and Exodus 6:6’s “burdens” (סִבְלֹת, sivlot) share the root סבל, “to bear a load.” The shared root makes freedom tactile: what presses on the body is something carried, and release ends that carrying.
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