What Does Psalm 94:9 Mean?
Does the one who plants the ear not hear? Does the one who shapes the eye not see?
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
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?THE KEY
The one who plants the capacity to hear and shapes the capacity to see is not beyond hearing or seeing.
THE MEANING
The one who plants the ear hears; the one who forms the eye sees. What is dismissed by human ears or hidden from human eyes remains within God’s perception. The source of your capacity to perceive is not unaware of what you experience.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Human silence or inattention does not mean that what is happening to you goes unheard or unseen.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁמָע
yishmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, or give heed.
The root can carry hearing into attentive response: its familiar command form, shema, means “hear and respond.” Here, the question reaches beyond whether sound arrives; it asks whether the maker of hearing gives heed.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The root’s responsive sense makes the verse’s question about God’s attention, not merely the ability to register sound.
shemuʿah: A report, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
What is heard can become known; the verse presents no human report as needed to give God awareness.
יֹצֵר
yotser
GROWS FROM
יצר
To form or shape.
Yatsar describes shaping something into form, as a potter shapes a vessel. The eye is not an accident in the verse: the one who shaped sight is not sightless.
ALSO GROWS
yotser: One who forms; a former or potter.
יוֹצֵר
This is the form used here: the eye is shaped by a maker who can see.
yetser: Formation, inclination, or impulse.
יֵצֶר
The same root can name what is formed within; it links shaping with the resulting capacity or disposition.
הֲנֹטַע
hanotaʿ
GROWS FROM
נטע
To plant or set into the ground.
The ear is described as planted, giving hearing the image of a living capacity set in place. The source that plants this receptive faculty is not less receptive than what it has made.
ALSO GROWS
nataʿ: To plant.
נָטַע
The verb makes the ear’s capacity to hear something given and deliberately set in place.
netaʿ: A plant or planting.
נֶטַע
The noun preserves the living image: the ear is planted like something that grows from its source.
THE PATTERN
The source that gives creatures the capacity to perceive is not unaware of what they experience.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD made even both of them.And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.Psalm 94:9 and Exodus 3:7 share the Hebrew root שמע (shamaʿ), “hear, listen,” and both pair hearing with sight. The Psalm asks whether the maker of the ear hears; Exodus voices that hearing as attention to distress.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us