What Does 1 Chronicles 29:13 Mean?
Now therefore, our God, we extend our hands to you, and praise your beautiful name.
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
Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name.THE KEY
You are not praising a title; you are naming the splendor already present in God’s nature.
THE MEANING
Your thanks and praise answer the nature of God as it is already revealed: the splendor is present before your words respond. The verse speaks in the plural, “we”, so gratitude becomes a shared voice naming what praise celebrates.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that your praise supplies God with glory: the glory is already held in God’s nature, and your words recognize it.
THE ROOT
מְהַלְלִים
məhaləlîm
GROWS FROM
הלל
h-l-l
To praise, celebrate, or boast.
This root also gives tehillah, praise or a song of praise, and hallelu, the call to praise Yah. Praise here gives voice to God’s worth; it recognizes what is already present in the name.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise; a song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
The same root turns praise into a voiced expression of the worth being recognized.
hallelu: Praise!; a plural call to praise.
הַלְלוּ
This form makes praise a shared response, echoing the verse’s “we.”
תִּפְאֶרֶת
tifʾeret
GROWS FROM
פאר
p-ʾ-r
To adorn, beautify, or make splendid.
“beautiful” in this verse is tifʾeret. The phrase holds name and splendor together: God’s name carries the revealed beauty of the one named. Praise gives that already-present splendor its voice.
ALSO GROWS
paʾer: To adorn, beautify, or glorify.
פָּאֵר
This verbal branch shows splendor as something made visible in beauty.
tifʾarah: Beauty, adornment, or splendor.
תִּפְאָרָה
This related noun makes the verse’s “glorious” quality concrete as beauty and splendor.
מוֹדִים
modim
GROWS FROM
ידה
y-d-h
To give thanks, acknowledge, or praise.
“extend our hands” in this verse is modim. The word translated “thank” belongs to a root that also means to acknowledge and praise. Gratitude here is recognition spoken toward God, set beside the praise that names God’s splendor.
ALSO GROWS
todah: Thanksgiving, acknowledgment, or praise.
תּוֹדָה
This related word shows thanks as an expressed recognition, not only an inward feeling.
hodu: Give thanks!; acknowledge with thanks.
הוֹדוּ
This shared-root form turns gratitude into a voiced response, as it is in this verse.
THE PATTERN
Praise gives shared voice to the worth already revealed in God’s name.
O grow the LORD great with me, and let us lift up his name together.Let every thing that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.Through him, then, let us always carry up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.THE THREAD
Praise the LORD. Praise, you servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD.The Hebrew repeats halal, the same praise-root found in “we praise” here, and directs that praise toward the LORD’s name. The repetition makes praise a way of naming God’s nature aloud.
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