What Does Psalm 86:15 Mean?
But you, O Lord, are a compassionate God, and of favor, slow to flare, and abounding in faithful love and truth.
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
But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.THE KEY
The verse describes one steady nature: compassion that stays patient, gives faithful love abundantly, and remains true.
THE MEANING
You meet compassion that gives favor and is slow to flare. The faithful love named here is abundant and held together with truth, so tenderness does not conceal what is real.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that being fully seen in truth means losing compassion; here truth and abundant faithful love belong to the same nature.
THE ROOT
רַחוּם
rachum
GROWS FROM
רחם
Tender compassion, a family of words associated with the womb.
“a compassionate God” in this verse is rachum. The word for compassion belongs to the same family as words for the womb and tender compassion. That kinship gives compassion the feel of protective care that responds to vulnerability, not merely kind judgment from a distance.
ALSO GROWS
rechem: Womb
רֶחֶם
This related word shows the bodily, protective tenderness carried in the compassion family.
rachamim: Compassion, tender mercies
רַחֲמִים
It carries the same compassion root as the word describing God here.
אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם
erekh appayim
GROWS FROM
ארך
To be long, to extend.
The full phrase literally means “long of nostrils”: אַפַּיִם (appayim) means nostrils and can also convey anger. The image is not the absence of anger, but the lengthening before its flare, the LORD is slow to flare.
ALSO GROWS
orekh: Length
אֹרֶךְ
It makes the root’s basic sense of extension concrete.
arokh: Long
אָרֹךְ
It shows how the root’s sense of length becomes the verse’s image of delayed anger.
חֶסֶד
chesed
GROWS FROM
חסד
Faithful, loyal love.
“abounding in faithful love” in this verse is chesed. The word translated “mercy” carries the sense of faithful love: care that remains committed. Its abundance here is joined with truth, giving the verse a picture of love that is both steadfast and real.
ALSO GROWS
chasadim: Acts of faithful love
חֲסָדִים
The plural pictures faithful love expressed in many ways.
chasid: A faithful or devoted person
חָסִיד
This related form names someone characterized by loyal devotion.
THE PATTERN
Compassion is a steady divine nature expressed through patience and abundant faithful love.
And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,The LORD is compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, and abounding in faithful love.Look, we count them flourishing who remain under it. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the end of the LORD, for the LORD is very tender in his inward parts, and moved to groan.THE THREAD
And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,The same Hebrew sequence returns here: compassion, favor, slowness to flare, abundant faithful love, and truth. Psalm 86:15 names that whole nature again, showing these are interwoven qualities rather than separate moods.
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