Psalm 130 · Symbol · Waiting
The Words Qavah and Prosdechomai
Seven Hebrew and Greek words carry the Bible's teaching on waiting for the LORD.
The verb Psalm 130 uses for a soul waiting on the LORD is the verb Genesis 1:9 uses for the waters gathered into one place.
I wait for the LORD; my soul does wait, and in His word I put my hope.
- The word
- קָוָה (qâvâh), H6960
- First appears
- Genesis 1:9 “And God said, “Let the waters under the…”
Summary
Scripture's words for waiting name a looking toward God for help He has not yet given. In Hebrew the chief verb is qâvâh, joined by yâchal, châkâh and dâmam, and in Greek it is prosdéchomai, joined by apekdéchomai and the noun hypomonḗ. The sense of each word in a given verse comes from that verse. Read that way, the words show waiting as trust directed to a Person and to His promise, kept up in prayer and in patience until He acts.
- Qâvâh (H6960) is the Hebrew verb of Psalm 27:14, Psalm 130:5 and Isaiah 40:31.
- Psalm 130:5 sets qâvâh twice beside yâchal, so waiting for the LORD and hoping in His word stand together.
- Prosdéchomai (G4327) means both to wait for and to welcome, and Luke uses it of Simeon, Anna's hearers and Joseph of Arimathea.
- Adam Clarke read qâvâh as a cord stretched from the heart to God, and Strong and Brown-Driver-Briggs, who trace the root to twisting, mark that origin as probable.
Waiting in Two Languages
The words stand in both Testaments, from the Law to the letters of the New Testament.
The question here is what the Hebrew and Greek words for waiting mean in the verses where they stand. This study belongs to the trial of waiting.
This study gives the chief Hebrew verb, qâvâh, with three verbs that stand beside it, and the chief Greek verb, prosdéchomai, with two words that stand beside it. It traces qâvâh from Jacob's blessing to Lamentations, gives the cautions that keep a reader from reading more into the word than its sentence says, and shows the two senses of prosdéchomai, waiting and welcoming.
Seven Words for Waiting
Four Hebrew words and three Greek words, with the books that hold most of their uses.
Qâvâh is the most frequent Hebrew verb for waiting, and more than half of the verses that hold it stand in the Psalms and Isaiah.
| Word | Sense | Uses | Verses | Where most uses stand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew words | ||||
| qâvâh, קָוָה, H6960, verb | to wait for; to gather | 49 | 45 | Psalms 17, Isaiah 15, Job 5, Jeremiah 5 |
| yâchal, יָחַל, H3176, verb | to wait; to hope | 41 | 41 | Psalms 19, Job 8 |
| châkâh, חָכָה, H2442, verb | to wait | 14 | 13 | Isaiah 4, Job 2, Psalms 2, 2 Kings 2 |
| dâmam, דָּמַם, H1826, verb | to be still; to be silent | 30 | 29 | Jeremiah 8, Psalms 7 |
| Greek words | ||||
| prosdéchomai, προσδέχομαι, G4327, verb | to wait for; to welcome | 14 | 14 | Luke 5, Acts 2, Hebrews 2 |
| apekdéchomai, ἀπεκδέχομαι, G553, verb | to wait eagerly; to expect | 8 | 8 | Romans 3 |
| hypomonḗ, ὑπομονή, G5281, noun | endurance; perseverance | 32 | 31 | Revelation 7, Romans 6 |
prosdéchomai, προσδέχομαι, G4327, verb, apekdéchomai, ἀπεκδέχομαι, G553, verb, hypomonḗ, ὑπομονή, G5281, noun
Qâvâh from Jacob to Lamentations
The verb names a dying patriarch's hope, a prophet's trust, a king's prayer and a city's hope after its fall.
JACOB'S BLESSING
In the middle of his blessings on his sons, Jacob turns to the LORD and says that he waits for His salvation.
TRUST WHILE HIS FACE IS HIDDEN
While the LORD hides His face from the house of Jacob, Isaiah says that he will put his trust in Him.
GOOD TO THOSE WHO WAIT
After the fall of Jerusalem the poet says that the LORD is good to those who wait for Him.
ALL DAY LONG
David asks God to teach him and says that he waits for the God of his salvation through the whole day.
Good to those who wait, All day long
My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning— more than watchmen wait for the morning.The verse after the qâvâh of Psalm 130:5 shows what that waiting is like, a watch kept for a morning that is sure to come.
In Psalm 130:5 the verb stands twice, in "I wait for the LORD" and in "my soul does wait," and then the psalmist turns to yâchal for the hope he puts in God's word.
The Root and the Cord
Each caution comes from the verses themselves and from what Strong and Brown-Driver-Briggs say of qâvâh.
A cord stretched from the heart to GodH6960 in Psalm 130:5
Adam Clarke wrote on Psalm 130:5 that the word "properly signifies the extension of a cord from one point to another. This is a fine metaphor: God is one point, the human heart is the other; and the extended cord between both is the earnest believing desire of the soul."
Strong's definition of qâvâh reads "to bind together (perhaps by twisting), i.e. collect". Brown-Driver-Briggs gives the history of the root as "probably originally twist, stretch, then of tension of enduring, waiting". Neither work makes the twisting the sense of the verb in a given verse.
A reader can keep Clarke's picture as a picture. The sense of qâvâh in Psalm 130:5 comes from its own sentence, and the cord is Clarke's picture laid over it.
Waters gathered into one placeH6960 in Genesis 1:9
The first verse of the Bible with qâvâh has nothing to do with waiting. God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place" (Genesis 1:9). The Outline of Biblical Usage that the Blue Letter Bible prints for H6960 lists this use under a second sense of the root, to collect or to bind together. A reader who meets the verb in the Psalms takes its sense from the Psalms.
Tiqvah, the noun of the same rootH8615 in Joshua 2:18 and Psalm 62:5
The noun tiqvah, from the same root, is the scarlet cord Rahab tied in her window (Joshua 2:18), and elsewhere it means hope, as in "my hope comes from Him" (Psalm 62:5).
Prosdéchomai: Waiting and Welcoming
The Greek verb means to receive a person and to wait for what is promised.
Abbott-Smith's Greek dictionary of the New Testament (1922) divides prosdéchomai into two senses. The first is to receive or welcome, as when the Pharisees grumbled, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:2). Paul used it of Phoebe when he asked the Romans to "Welcome her in the Lord" (Romans 16:2).
The second sense is to wait for or expect. Simeon "was waiting for the consolation of Israel" (Luke 2:25), and Joseph of Arimathea, who asked for the body of Jesus, "was waiting for the kingdom of God" (Luke 23:51). In Luke 2:38 the same participle describes the people to whom Anna spoke.
as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.Paul uses prosdéchomai for the church's waiting for the appearing of Christ, the hope that Simeon, Anna's hearers and Joseph of Arimathea saw begun.
keep yourselves in the love of God as you await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you eternal life.Jude uses the same verb for waiting for the mercy of Christ that brings eternal life, joined to keeping oneself in God's love.
Paul's stronger compound, apekdéchomai, stands three times in Romans 8. The creation waits "in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God" (Romans 8:19). Believers groan inwardly as they wait for their adoption as sons (Romans 8:23). Paul sets the verb beside hypomonḗ, endurance, when he writes, "But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently" (Romans 8:25).
How the Words Have Been Taught
A nineteenth-century preacher drew a lesson for the one who waits from Psalm 130:5.
1834 to 1892 · Charles Spurgeon
Waiting does good to the one who waits, by one reading of the repeated verb in Psalm 130:5. In The Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon wrote, "The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes". He went on, "The Lord's people have always been a waiting people: they waited for the First Advent, and now they wait for the Second".
Waiting with the Whole Soul
The words end in a command to be still before the LORD.
Across both Testaments the words for waiting point the one who waits toward God and toward what He has promised.
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men prosper in their ways, when they carry out wicked schemes.The verse stands last because it gives the one who waits a command to keep while the answer is still delayed.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, the Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament (TAHOT) and Greek New Testament (TAGNT), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible, the Brief lexicons of Extended Strongs for Hebrew and Greek (TBESH, TBESG), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0, the Greek based on Abbott-Smith (1922)
- James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (1890), H6960.
- Brown-Driver-Briggs on H6960, with the Outline of Biblical Usage, as the Blue Letter Bible record for H6960 prints them.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Psalm 130:5.
- Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, volume 7 (1885), on Psalm 130:5.
Keep Studying
Read it1
Studies1
Symbols1