What Does 1 Chronicles 16:8 Mean?
Extend your hands in thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people.THE KEY
The verse makes knowing travel outward: what is recognized becomes thanksgiving, invocation, and shared telling.
THE MEANING
Thanksgiving is acknowledgment voiced in response to what the LORD does; calling on his name addresses the nature carried by that name. His deeds become speakable among people, turning recognition into shared knowledge. The verse is present wherever what is known of the LORD is made known through what he does.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that gratitude belongs only to private feeling: here, thanks and invocation open into public telling. It also loosens the idea that a name is only a label; the name carries the nature being called upon.
THE ROOT
הוֹדִיעוּ
hôdîʿû
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive; in the causative form here, to cause to know.
The verse’s verb is the causative form of ידע: to cause to know, or make known. Its outward proclamation grows from the same seed as knowing and knowledge, so telling is how recognition becomes shared.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know, recognize, perceive.
יָדַע
This direct verb shares the root; the verse’s making known carries knowing outward to others.
yediʿah: Knowledge, knowing.
יְדִיעָה
This noun from the same root shows the shared knowledge that public telling brings into view.
קִרְאוּ
qirʾû
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
To call, summon, cry out; also to read or proclaim.
“call upon” in this verse is qirʾû. The same root names calling and reading or proclaiming, joining the address to the LORD’s name with the public telling of his deeds. The name carries the nature being called upon, not merely a sound or label.
ALSO GROWS
qeriʾah: Calling or reading.
קְרִיאָה
This noun shares the root consonants and holds together the call and the act of voicing words.
miqraʾ: Reading, proclamation, or convocation.
מִקְרָא
This related form shows how a call can become a spoken proclamation gathered into public hearing.
THE PATTERN
Recognition of God’s character takes public form through praise and the telling of what God does.
And on that day you will say, Extend your hands to the LORD, call upon his nature, make his doings known among the peoples, and speak aloud that his nature is lifted high.Recount his weight among the nations; his wonders among all peoples.But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.THE THREAD
Now therefore, please, if I have found favor in your eyes, make me know your way, that I may know you, that I may find favor in your eyes. And see that this nation is your people.In Exodus, the same ידע root appears in “shew me” and “that I may know thee”: disclosure and knowing are joined in one movement. That makes “make known” here more than passing along facts; the deeds open a way to know the one whose nature they reveal.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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