What Does Psalm 83:12 Mean?
Who say, Let us take hold of the pastures of God for ourselves.
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
Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession.THE KEY
“Possess” comes from a root that also means “inherit” and “dispossess,” so “for ourselves” reveals the speakers’ claim on God’s dwelling as an act of taking.
THE MEANING
You hear a collective claim to take God’s dwellings and make them “ours.” The phrase “for ourselves” exposes the direction of the desire: possession through seizure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being able to seize something makes it rightfully yours.
THE ROOT
נִירְשָׁה
nireshah
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
to inherit, take possession, or dispossess
“take hold of ... for ourselves” in this verse is nireshah. The root ירשׁ (yarash, “inherit or take possession”) spans both receiving an inheritance and dispossessing another. Here, “for ourselves” gives the claim its force: the speakers want to make God’s dwelling theirs by taking it.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: inherit, take possession, dispossess
יָרַשׁ
The verb holds both inheritance and seizure within one root, illuminating the force of the speakers’ proposed possession.
yerushah: inheritance, possession
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun shows the same root can describe what is held as an inheritance, sharpening the contrast with the speakers’ act of taking.
morashah: heritage, inherited possession
מוֹרָשָׁה
A possession received as heritage grows from the same seed as the speakers’ claim to take possession for themselves.
THE PATTERN
Collective self-rule recasts what belongs to God as something to seize or cast off.
Let us tear their bonds apart, and throw their cords off us.But when those who work the soil saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and hold his inheritance.THE THREAD
For the evildoers will be cut off, and those stretched toward the LORD will inherit the land.“Inherit” comes from the same root, ירשׁ (yarash), as “take ... in possession” here. The shared root links possession and inheritance, while the verses distinguish taking for oneself from inheriting.
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