What Does Psalm 88:13 Mean?
But I cry out to you, LORD, and in the morning my prayer meets 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
But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.THE KEY
The prayer does not merely reach toward the LORD; its Hebrew says it goes ahead to meet him.
THE MEANING
Your cry is directed to the LORD while distress remains present. At morning, your prayer is pictured as arriving before him, holding anguish and address together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the fear that an anguished cry is too late to reach God: the prayer is pictured as arriving before the LORD at morning.
THE ROOT
תְּקַדְּמֶךָ
teqaddemekha
GROWS FROM
קדם
q-d-m
To be in front, precede, or meet.
“meets” in this verse is teqaddemekha. The KJV’s “prevent” preserves its older sense of “come before”: the prayer takes the place of what is ahead, meeting the LORD before the speaker does. The root’s frontward image makes morning prayer an arrival already in motion.
ALSO GROWS
qedem: Front, east, or former time.
קֶדֶם
Its senses point to what is in front, whether in space or time, echoing the prayer that goes before the LORD.
qadim: East wind.
קָדִים
This branch preserves the root’s directional sense of the east as the frontward direction.
qiddem: Met, anticipated, or came before.
קִדֵּם
This verb makes the verse’s image explicit: the prayer precedes the one it is addressed to.
THE PATTERN
Prayer moves toward God at the beginning of the day, before the day’s light is full.
You hear my voice at morning, LORD; at morning I lay out my prayer before you, and keep watch from the height.I come before the dawn and cry out; I wait on your word.And in the morning, while it was still dark, rising long before day, he went out and went away to an empty place, and there he prayed.THE THREAD
I come before the dawn and cry out; I wait on your word.Both verses use קדם (q-d-m): in Psalm 119 the speaker comes before dawn; here the prayer comes before the LORD. The shared root links rising ahead of the morning with prayer already on its way to meet God.
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