What Does Psalm 85:6 Mean?
Will you not turn again and make us live? Your people will rejoice in you.
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
Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?THE KEY
The Hebrew moves from God’s return to renewed life to shared joy, placing the people’s rejoicing downstream of being made alive.
THE MEANING
This question names the reader’s present longing for life to return. It holds open a movement in which God returns, life rises again among the people, and joy gathers around God. The joy is bound to the source of that renewed life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that diminished life makes renewed joy impossible; the verse joins life’s return to joy in God.
THE ROOT
תָּשׁוּב
tashuv
GROWS FROM
שוב
sh-w-b
To turn back or return.
“turn again” in this verse is tashuv. The word rendered “again” comes from the verb “return.” In Hebrew, God is the one who returns, immediately before the verb “make us live”; renewal begins with that return.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
It carries the same movement of turning back that opens the verse’s renewal.
yashuv: He will return.
יָשׁוּב
This form makes the root’s action explicit: a return, not merely repetition.
תְּחַיֵּנוּ
techayyenu
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live; in this form, to cause to live.
“make us live” in this verse is techayyenu. The verb means “cause us to live.” The root links revival with life itself, so the verse’s renewal is life returning to the people, not a separate quality being added to them.
ALSO GROWS
chay: Living, alive.
חַי
It names the living state the verse asks to return to the people.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
It shares the same root, holding “revive” and “life” within one word-family.
יִשְׂמְחוּ
yismechu
GROWS FROM
שמח
ś-m-ḥ
To rejoice or be glad.
“rejoice” in this verse is yismechu. The people’s joy is not detached from the preceding renewal: the verse places their rejoicing after being made alive. The same root names gladness as a state as well as the act of rejoicing.
ALSO GROWS
simchah: Joy, gladness.
שִׂמְחָה
It names the joy that the people’s shared rejoicing expresses.
sameach: Glad, rejoicing.
שָׂמֵחַ
It describes the glad state contained in the verb used of the people.
THE PATTERN
God’s restoring action brings life and gladness into view.
You overturned the beating of my breast into a dance. You untied my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.You have made known to me the ways of life; you will fill me with gladness in your face.These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be filled.THE THREAD
And we will not go back from you; bring us to life, and we will call upon your nature.The Hebrew verb translated “quicken” comes from חיה (chayah), the same root as “revive” here: to live, or cause to live. Psalm 80 places that life-giving action after “go back from thee,” echoing this verse’s sequence of return, renewed life, and response.
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