What Does Psalm 94:6 Mean?
They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.
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
They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for widow is traditionally linked to silence, revealing how violence reaches those power can leave unheard.
THE MEANING
The verse names violence against the widow, the resident outsider, and the fatherless as a present reality. Their vulnerability does not make their deaths less visible: the people harmed and the killing itself are spoken aloud.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence against the unprotected is less serious or can pass unseen because its victims have little power.
THE ROOT
אַלְמָנָה
ʾalmānāh
GROWS FROM
אלם
ʾ-l-m
to be silent or become mute
The word for widow is traditionally connected with the root for silence or muteness. That echo does not mean a widow is literally mute; it sharpens the verse’s image of violence reaching someone whose voice and protection can be ignored.
ALSO GROWS
ʾālam: to be silent, become mute
אָלַם
This verb is traditionally traced to the same root associated with the widow’s name, bringing an echo of silence into the verse.
ʾillēm: mute, unable to speak
אִלֵּם
This related word makes the root’s sense of silence explicit.
גֵּר
gēr
GROWS FROM
גור
g-w-r
to sojourn or dwell as an outsider
The English word “stranger” can suggest a passing visitor, while this word names someone residing among others as an outsider. The verse exposes violence against a person present in the community yet without the same inherited ties or protection.
ALSO GROWS
gūr: to sojourn, reside as an outsider
גּוּר
The verb shows the stranger as someone living among others, not merely passing through.
gēr: resident outsider, sojourner
גֵּר
This is the person named in the verse: present among the community, yet exposed by their outsider status.
יְרַצֵּחוּ
yeratzechu
GROWS FROM
רצח
r-ṣ-ḥ
to murder or kill
“murder” in this verse is yeratzechu. The verse uses a different verb for killing the fatherless than for slaying the widow and the stranger. This is the same root used in the commandment the KJV renders “Thou shalt not kill,” placing this violence against the fatherless in direct contact with that prohibition.
ALSO GROWS
rāṣaḥ: to murder or kill
רָצַח
This verb names the act carried out against the fatherless in the verse.
rōṣēaḥ: murderer
רֹצֵחַ
The same root names the person who commits the killing, keeping the act and its agent connected.
THE PATTERN
A community’s justice is exposed by how it treats those with the least protection.
He executes judgment for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him bread and a cloak.Learn to do good. Seek justice, straighten the crushed, judge the fatherless, contend for the widow.Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
You shall not murder.The verb translated “murder” in Psalm 94:6 belongs to the same root as the commandment the KJV translates “Thou shalt not kill.” That link makes this verse’s charge immediate: the fatherless are being killed by the very violence the commandment forbids.
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