What Does Psalm 94:23 Mean?
He turns back their crookedness upon them, and cuts them off in their own evil; the LORD our God cuts them off.
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
And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off.THE KEY
The phrase “bring upon” is וַיָּשֶׁב (vayyashev, “he brings back”), from שׁוּב (shuv, “return”): what they have done comes back as the means of their own removal.
THE MEANING
Wrongdoing does not remain outside the one who does it; it returns upon its source. The LORD our God brings their own wrongdoing back upon them and cuts them off through the very wickedness they enact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm can remain separate from the one who causes it is undone: their own wrongdoing returns upon them.
THE ROOT
וַיָּשֶׁב
vayyashev
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
turn back; return
“turns back upon them” in this verse is vayyashev. The verse’s וַיָּשֶׁב (vayyashev, “he brings back”) comes from שׁוּב (shuv, “return”). The consequence is pictured as what the wrongdoers have set in motion coming back upon them; the verse then says יַצְמִיתֵם (yatzmitem, “he cuts them off”), completing that return.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: to return; to turn back
שׁוּב
This is the root itself: the verse’s judgment carries the sense of what was done returning to its source.
hēshīv: he brought back; he returned
הֵשִׁיב
This related verb form makes the return explicit, illuminating the force of “bring upon” in the verse.
teshuvah: return; turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun preserves the same return pattern: what turns away can turn back, echoing the verse’s movement of consequence back toward its source.
THE PATTERN
What is cast outward returns to its source and becomes the measure of its consequence.
For near is the day of the LORD upon all the nations. As you have done, so will it be done to you. Your repayment turns back upon your own head.Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
For near is the day of the LORD upon all the nations. As you have done, so will it be done to you. Your repayment turns back upon your own head.Obadiah uses יָשׁוּב (yashuv, “it shall return”) from שׁוּב (shuv, “return”), the same root in Psalm 94:23’s וַיָּשֶׁב (vayyashev, “he brings back”). Both verses show the consequence returning upon the one whose actions set it in motion.
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