Psalms 107:36 Meaning and Explanation
“And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation;”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Rescue in this psalm keeps going past relief. Verse 36 shows what the new springs are for: people with nothing are placed in the watered land and handed a project. The line answers a question many of us carry quietly, about whether God's help ends at survival or reaches all the way into a settled life with work in it.
Once the desert has water, God settles hungry people in it and gives them the work of building a place to live. Provision here includes purpose, land, and a community to establish.
The Context of Psalms 107:36
Verse 36 continues the sentence begun in verse 35, where wilderness became standing water and dry ground became springs. 'There' points to that newly watered place. Verses 37 and 38 carry the scene forward with sown fields, planted vineyards, increase, blessing, and growing herds. The vocabulary deliberately recalls the chapter's opening rescue, since the desert travelers of verse 4 found no city to dwell in and were led in verse 7 to a city of habitation. The closing meditation thus repeats on a larger canvas what the first portrait showed happening to one group.
What Does Psalms 107:36 Mean?
Three elements sit in this line. 'There' anchors the action to the specific place God has just watered, so the gift of the springs and the gift of a home belong together. 'He maketh the hungry to dwell' names who receives the land. Hunger is the qualification, which means need itself draws God's attention. 'Dwell' carries permanence, in contrast with the wandering of verse 4. Then the purpose clause arrives: 'that they may prepare a city for habitation.' The verb is theirs. God settles them, and they build. Divine gift and human labor appear in one sentence without competing.
The pattern here runs through Scripture's account of the land. Israel was given a country described as having cities they did not build and wells they did not dig, and was then charged to live in it faithfully, plant it, and keep its laws. Verse 36 compresses that arrangement. God supplies the conditions and the people supply the work of settlement. The word 'hungry' also links back to verse 9, where the LORD fills the hungry soul with goodness. What began as an inward satisfaction becomes an outward reality here, with the hungry given fields, walls, and neighbors.
Mary's song takes up this note when she says God has filled the hungry with good things, using the same category of person the psalm names. Jesus fed crowds in a desert place and told his hearers that their Father knows what they need. He also spoke of going to prepare a place, and the last chapters of Scripture describe a city prepared for God's people. Psalm 107:36 keeps that hope grounded. The city here is built by ordinary hands in real soil, given by God and constructed by the people he settled there.
Psalms 107:36 in the Original Language
yashab (יָשַׁב), 'dwell' -- to sit down and stay, to settle in a place as a resident. The same root lies behind the sitting prisoners of verse 10, so the psalm uses one word for both being stuck in a cell and being finally at home.
Bible Verses Related to Psalms 107:36
“And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.”
- Psalm 107:7
“For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.”
- Psalm 107:9
“And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,”
- Deuteronomy 6:10
“He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.”
- Luke 1:53
Where Psalms 107:36 Echoes in Scripture
Luke 1:53 draws on this psalm's vocabulary when Mary sings that God has filled the hungry with good things. The hungry are the same class of person Psalm 107 keeps returning to, in verse 5, verse 9, and verse 36. Mary's song places that pattern at the center of what God is doing in the birth she carries, which suggests that the settling of hungry people described here was never only about one ancient landscape.
How to Apply Psalms 107:36 Today
Stability is a gift worth naming. Many of us have a roof, a job, and a neighborhood that we did not create for ourselves, and this verse invites gratitude for the ordinary conditions that let us build. It also assigns work. A city gets prepared by people who show up: repairing what is broken, welcoming newcomers, teaching children, keeping promises to neighbors. Those without a settled place have a claim on our attention here, since God's own pattern is to seat the hungry in a good land. Helping someone find housing or belonging joins that work directly.
Reflection & Prayer
What part of the place we live in has God given us to help prepare, and have we been treating it as someone else's task? A prayer for settled ground: Lord, you seat the hungry and hand them tools. Thank you for a place to stand. Show me the work in front of me here, and let others find room beside me. Amen.