When they are decreased and humbled by oppression, evil, and sorrow,
Parallel translations
- WEB Again, they are diminished and bowed down through oppression, trouble, and sorrow.
- KJV Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.
- NKJV When they are diminished and brought low Through oppression, affliction, and sorrow,
- NASB ¶When they become few and lowly Because of oppression, misery, and sorrow,
- NLT When they decrease in number and become impoverished through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Yet at times they are diminished and humbled through oppression, trouble, and sorrow.
Overview
The psalm acknowledges that the same people can later be reduced and bowed down by affliction and grief. Fortunes rise and fall under God's sovereign hand. This honest realism about life's reversals reminds believers that their security rests not in circumstances but in the unchanging God who works all things toward good in Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Exod 2:23–24After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned and cried out under their burden of slavery, and their cry for deliverance from bondage ascended to God.
- 2 Kgs 10:32In those days the LORD began to reduce the size of Israel. Hazael defeated the Israelites throughout their territory
- 2 Chr 15:5–6In those days there was no safety for travelers, because the residents of the lands had many conflicts.
- Judg 6:3–6Whenever the Israelites would plant their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and other people of the east would come up and invade them,
- 2 Kgs 14:26For the LORD saw that the affliction of the Israelites, both slave and free, was very bitter. There was no one to help Israel,
- 2 Kgs 8:3At the end of seven years, when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she went to the king to appeal for her house and her land.
- Exod 1:13–14They worked the Israelites ruthlessly
- 1 Sam 2:5–7The well-fed hire themselves out for food, but the starving hunger no more. The barren woman gives birth to seven, but she who has many sons pines away.
- Ps 30:6–7In prosperity I said, “I will never be shaken.”
- 2 Kgs 13:7Jehoahaz had no army left, except fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers, because the king of Aram had destroyed them and made them like the dust at threshing.
- Ruth 1:20–21“Do not call me Naomi,” she replied. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has dealt quite bitterly with me.
- Gen 45:11And there I will provide for you, because there will be five more years of famine. Otherwise, you and your household and everything you own will come to destitution.’
- Job 1:10–17Have You not placed a hedge on every side around him and his household and all that he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
- 2 Kgs 4:8One day Elisha went to Shunem, and a prominent woman who lived there persuaded him to have a meal. So whenever he would pass by, he would stop there to eat.
- Jer 51:33–34For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.”
- 2 Kgs 13:22And Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel throughout the reign of Jehoahaz.
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 107:39 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.