Bible Strands
Psalms 107:34
and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist narrates God’s judicial actions within a sequence of divine transformations, addressing a community observing how moral failure triggers environmental reversal.
The words — מְלֵחָה (meleChah) = saltiness or salt fields, and יֹשְׁבֵי (yoshevei) = dwellers, which the text directly links to the cause of the land’s transformation.
The thread — The motif of fertile ground being contrasted with or reduced to salted, barren terrain appears in Genesis 13:10, Genesis 14:3, and Deuteronomy 29:23.
Why it lands — The text states that God converts productive land into salt fields because of the wickedness of its inhabitants. This demands the reader acknowledge the concrete consequence of moral corruption and recognize that divine judgment operates through the alteration of the physical world.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
Cross-references
- Genesis 13:10 And Lot looked out and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan, all the way to Zoar, was well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)
- Genesis 14:3 The latter five came as allies to the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea).
- Deuteronomy 29:23 All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger.
- Ezekiel 47:11 But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt.
- Genesis 13:13 But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD.
- Genesis 19:24 Then the LORD rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens.
- Isaiah 32:13 and for the land of my people, overgrown with thorns and briers—even for every house of merriment in this city of revelry.