HEBREW WORD STUDY – ASHAMED – BOSH – בושׁ
Psalms 25:2 “O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.”
I find it hard to believe that David is pleading with God to keep him from being embarrassed or humiliated. In the same verse he is pleading with God to prevent his enemies from triumphing over him. If this is typical of David’s style of writing, then enemies triumphing over him is somehow related to being humiliated.
Every translation I have read renders the word bosh as ashamed. That is fine so long as we interpret ashamed as being confused or perplexed as that appears to be the basic intent of the word. The word is spelled “Beth, Vav, Shin.” This confusion flows from the heart being joined and consumed by flames of passion. This passion could be lust, anger, or fear.
It is possible that David is not so much concerned with being ashamed as he is with being consumed with a burning passion of fear.
What your Bible translations does not or cannot tell you is that there is some dispute over whether the word “let” is to be added. In the Masoretic text it is clearly in a Jussive (request) form so this is the general consensus but there are some dissenters of which I am one The Masoretic text is not the inspired Word of God so I don’t treat it as such. I would render this as “O’my God, I trust in you therefore I am not consumed by fear.”
As I ponder the grammatical structure of this verse, I find the syntax to be ambiguous (as is usually the case in Hebrew). There are a couple ways to render this. When I look at the word trust I find it the word batach which comes from the Middle Egyptian for welding. Welding is an ancient art going back 2,500 years. The word itself means to adhere, or being welded to God. Hence you find that this welding to God results in your heart finding a shelter in the heart of God. David does something pretty much out of style in his poetical writing, he attaches a personal pronoun to the word Elohim. Maybe I am stepping off the reservation a bit, but what I see David saying here is: “By trusting in God, I am not consumed by fear.” David is seeing himself as just a piece or player on a large chess board.
The Cheth in batach (trust) is telling us that we are joined with God such that we not only trust in Him but He is also trusting in us. We have become a piece in his chess game with the enemy. He will move us where it will best suit His strategy and although we may be just a chess piece not knowing what the ultimate strategy is, God can trust us to just not move from the position He moved us to on our own, but to wait for Him to decide when he can move us. Thus, wherever we move, the enemy will not “triumph. The word triumph in Hebrew is the word “alas,” which means to rejoice over an impending victory. If we move on our own, it will mess up God’s strategy in this big chess game and give the enemy an opportunity to rejoice over an impending victory, causing God to have to rework his strategy.
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