What Does Psalm 93:3 Mean?
The rivers lift up, O LORD; they raise their voice; the rivers lift up their pounding.
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
The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.THE KEY
The floods lift their waters, their voice, and their waves with the same Hebrew verb: the whole verse surges on one repeated rising.
THE MEANING
The force pressing against you can rise, make itself heard, and return in waves. The verse names that turmoil plainly before the LORD; its voice is not hidden or softened.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that turmoil must become quiet before it can be named before the LORD.
THE ROOT
נָשְׂאוּ
nāśəʾū
GROWS FROM
נשא
n-ś-ʾ
To lift, carry, or bear.
“lift up” in this verse is nāśəʾū. The same root appears in all three rising actions: the floods lift, lift their voice, and lift their waves. English makes these sound like separate movements, while Hebrew lets one verb carry the whole surge.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This is the root verb repeated through the verse, joining the water’s rising, its voice, and its waves.
nāśîʾ: A prince or leader.
נָשִׂיא
This word is associated with one lifted up, showing how the root can extend from raising something to the status of someone raised.
maśśāʾ: A burden or an oracle.
מַשָּׂא
A burden is something borne; an oracle is a message carried. The root gathers both physical force and voiced expression.
THE PATTERN
Rising turmoil may roar in full force, yet its sound does not become the final authority.
Though its waters roar and seethe, though the mountains quake with its swelling. Selah.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.And waking, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Be silent. Be muzzled. And the wind wore itself out, and a great calm came.THE THREAD
The LORD in the height is mightier than the voices of many waters, than the mighty breakers of the sea.Verse 3 lets the floods lift themselves three times; verse 4 answers their noise with the LORD’s greater might. The waters are not denied, their roar is placed beneath a higher rule.
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