What Does Psalm 85:3 Mean?
You gather in all your overflow; you turn back from the burning of your anger.
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
Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.THE KEY
The verse pictures anger as something gathered back and turned away, not a force that must keep advancing.
THE MEANING
The anger over you can end completely: it is gathered away, and the one who burns turns from that heat. The verse holds the anger’s reality and its removal together; the turn is complete.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once anger is fully kindled, it must have the final word.
THE ROOT
אָסַפְתָּ
asaphta
GROWS FROM
אָסַף
asaph
gather, collect
“gather in” in this verse is asaphta. The KJV gives the outcome, “taken away”, while the Hebrew verb’s seed means gathering or collecting. The verse pictures the whole of wrath gathered away, then pairs that gathering with a turn back.
ALSO GROWS
asif: ingathering, harvest
אָסִיף
A harvest is gathered in; the same root makes removal here feel like a real gathering, not merely a change of label.
me'asef: gatherer; rear guard
מְאַסֵּף
The rear guard gathers those behind, showing the root’s movement of collecting and drawing together.
הֱשִׁיבוֹתָ
heshivota
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
turn back, return; in a causative form, bring back or restore
“turn back” in this verse is heshivota. The verb comes from shuv, the root of turning and returning; its form here expresses turning something back. Anger does not simply fade in the verse: its direction changes.
ALSO GROWS
shav: returned, turned back
שָׁב
This form makes the change of direction in the verse concrete.
teshuvah: turning, return
תְּשׁוּבָה
The same root names return as a movement, echoing the reversal of anger here.
חֲרוֹן
charon
GROWS FROM
חָרָה
charah
be hot, burn, become angry
“burning” in this verse is charon. Fierceness is charon, from charah, “to burn” or “be hot.” Beside אַף (aph, “nostril; anger”), the phrase keeps a bodily image of anger as heat in the nostrils, and says that heat turns away.
ALSO GROWS
charah: burn, be hot, become angry
חָרָה
This verb exposes the heat inside the English word “fierceness.”
chori: burning heat, wrath
חֳרִי
This related form keeps the same image of anger as heat, clarifying what the verse says is turned away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures anger as capable of being turned away or put aside, so its heat need not be the final movement.
On that day you will say, O LORD, I will extend my hands to you. Though you burned against me, your burning turned back, and you comforted me.A soft answer turns away the burning, but words of pain stir up the nostrils.Let all bitterness, and boiling, and anger, and shouting, and speaking against, be lifted from you, with all wickedness.THE THREAD
But he, full of compassion, covers their crookedness and does not ruin them. Many times he turns back the burning of his anger and does not rouse all his heat.Psalm 78:38 uses the same שׁוּב (shuv, “turn/return”) root in “turned he his anger away.” It makes the movement here clearer: anger is turned back, and wrath is not stirred up again.
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