Read Psalm 16 here (text coming …) or at Bible Gateway.
The Hebrew paragraph:
16:1-11 {p} YHVH is my pleasant inheritance; because He is always before me, I shall not be moved.
Psalm 16:1-11 Chiastic Structure:
The New King James Bible has Psa 16:4 as,
Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god;
However, the Hebrew Bible in English says,
Let the idols of them be multiplied that make suit unto another.
Whoa, idols is a long way from sorrows as the NKJV has it.
Sorrow is from Strong’s H6094 atstsebeth, an abstract concept meaning, “sorrow, pain, or injury;” derived from Strong’s H6087 עצב atsab, a primitive verb meaning, “to labor, to be in pain, to be vexed, to worry.” The ancient pictographs are ayin + tsadey + bet.
ayin ע = eye, thus to see, watch, look, know, understand
tsadey צ ,ץ trail, thus a man concealed, journey, chase, hunt
bet ב = house, thus house, household, family, in, within
The parable being told by the Hebrew Root Word is of looking ahead (ayin) at a lifelong journey (tsadey) to maintain the house and family (bet). The sense I am getting, in its association to pain from grief or heavy toil, is of endless work: a job that is never completed. Housework, cooking, laundry, home repairs, raising crops, tending livestock, going to a job: it is the same work over and over again constantly repeating, which continues until the man and the woman return to the dust from which they were taken.
An alternate meaning of atsab according to Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon, is “to worry or be vexed,” and I think that is a very common side effect of the responsibility men and women have in caring for their family. Gesenius also says,
עצב To labor, to form, to fashion. The original idea is perhaps that of cutting, whether of wood or stones … hence a carved image, an earthen vessel.
So this is where the idol comes in, as a carved image, something man expends labor upon to produce. But I can’t stop thinking about worry as a vexing or painful sorrow. Isn’t a worry something we ourselves fashion or build out of future events? We imagine a worst-case scenario that has not yet come about, and then grieve over it. To worry is to carve an idol, in other words. We build something in our minds, and then take it for truth instead of the promises of God’s word. Let me be the first to repent of that idolatry right now, Father.
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