What Does 1 Kings 8:60 Mean?
so that all the peoples of the earth may perceive that the LORD is God, and that there is no other.
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
That all the people of the earth may know that the LORD is God, and that there is none else.THE KEY
The horizon is not merely that God exists, but that every people may recognize the LORD as God, with no rival beside him.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now of a recognition wide enough to include all the earth: the LORD is God, and there is none else. That knowing is an open horizon for every people, not a claim that everyone has already reached it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the LORD is one god among competing gods: the verse names no rival beside him.
THE ROOT
יָדַע
yādaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
to know, recognize, perceive
“perceive” in this verse is yādaʿ. Hebrew yada points beyond collecting facts toward recognition: knowing who someone is through familiarity and encounter. The verse joins that personal depth of knowing to a universal horizon, the whole earth may recognize the LORD’s identity and uniqueness.
ALSO GROWS
yada: to know, recognize
יָדַע
This is the verb behind “may know”: the verse envisions recognition of who the LORD is.
daʿat: knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This branch shows the same root’s knowing as understanding held in awareness, not just information heard.
THE PATTERN
Recognition of the LORD’s identity reaches toward all peoples and leaves no rival beside him.
Perceive therefore this day, and bring it back to your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above, and upon the earth beneath; there is no other.That they may know, from the rising of the sun and from its going down, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.And this is the life of the ages, that they might know you, the only God of truth, and Jesus, the Anointed One, whom you have sent.THE THREAD
Perceive therefore this day, and bring it back to your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above, and upon the earth beneath; there is no other.Both verses use יָדַע (yādaʿ, to know or recognize) and bring that knowing to the same conclusion: there is none else. Deuteronomy names the recognition; 1 Kings opens its horizon to all the earth.
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