What Does Psalm 83:13 Mean?
My God, set them like a wheel, like stubble before the breath.
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
O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind.THE KEY
The prayer imagines opposition losing its footing until it is reduced to loose matter carried wherever the wind moves.
THE MEANING
When a force bears down, this verse gives the plea for its collapse a stark image: it becomes a rolling wheel, then loose stubble carried by moving air. The verse names dispersal; the opponents are wished away from their place.
THE ROOT
גַּלְגַּל
galgal
GROWS FROM
גלל
galal
To roll.
“like a wheel” in this verse is galgal. The Hebrew word for wheel grows from the verb meaning to roll. The image carries motion inside the name: the threatening force is turned into something rolling without a settled place.
ALSO GROWS
galal: To roll or roll away.
גָּלַל
The verb at the root of galgal makes the wheel an image of movement rather than stable footing.
megillah: Scroll; a rolled document.
מְגִלָּה
A scroll carries the same rolling image, showing how this root names things formed by rolling.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
ruach
Breath; moving air, rendered wind here.
The Hebrew word ruach names wind and breath with one word. The air that scatters the stubble is also the moving breath, so the verse’s force is not separate from the movement that animates life.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath.
רוּחַ
The same Hebrew word translated as wind here also means breath, joining the moving air outside with the breath within.
ruach: Spirit; animating breath.
רוּחַ
The word can also name animating spirit, carrying the sense of movement and vitality within the wind image.
קַשׁ
qash
GROWS FROM
קשש
qashash
To gather stubble.
The word for stubble belongs to a root associated with gathering up loose stalks. Here the opponents become the dry residue itself: exposed, unanchored, and vulnerable to dispersal.
ALSO GROWS
qashash: To gather stubble or straw.
קָשַׁשׁ
The verb names the loose stalks in the verse as gathered residue, ready to be moved from where they lie.
meqoshesh: One who gathers sticks.
מְקֹשֵׁשׁ
This related form names a gatherer of loose plant matter, echoing the verse’s picture of what can be collected or scattered.
THE PATTERN
What is pictured as chaff has no lasting hold against the force that carries it away.
Let them be like chaff before the breath, and let the messenger of the LORD thrust them away.The nations shall crash like the roar of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be pursued like chaff of the mountains before the breath, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.They are like straw before the breath, and like chaff that a storm steals away.THE THREAD
The nations shall crash like the roar of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be pursued like chaff of the mountains before the breath, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word גַּלְגַּל (galgal, wheel or rolling thing) beside its image of chaff before the wind. The shared word sharpens the psalm’s picture: the threat is set rolling while the chaff is scattered.
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