What Does Exodus 15:18 Mean?
The LORD reigns for ages and ages.
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
The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.THE KEY
The LORD’s reign has no final generation: every age falls within its horizon.
THE MEANING
The verse names a reign whose horizon does not close. The present moment and every generation belong within its reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that the LORD’s reign has an expiration point dissolves here: no age is its last.
THE ROOT
יִמְלֹךְ
yimlokh
GROWS FROM
מלך
M-L-K
To rule or be king.
“reigns” in this verse is yimlokh. The verb “reign” grows from the same root as “king” and “kingdom.” Hebrew holds ruler, rule, and realm together in one family of words; here that reign stretches across every age.
ALSO GROWS
melek: King
מֶלֶךְ
The reign belongs to a ruler; it is not an impersonal force.
malkut: Kingship, kingdom
מַלְכוּת
This branch names the rule and realm carried by the same root as “shall reign.”
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s reign extends across all generations and ages, beyond the span of any single moment.
The LORD reigns for the ages, your God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Praise the LORD.How great are his signs! How mighty are his wonders! His governance is a governance of the ages, and his dominion is from generation to generation.And the seventh messenger blows the trumpet, and great voices sound in heaven, saying, The governance of the world becomes the governance of our Lord and of his Anointed One, and he reigns into the ages of the ages.THE THREAD
The LORD reigns for the ages, your God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Praise the LORD.Exodus and Psalm use the same Hebrew verb for “shall reign,” from מלך (M-L-K), meaning to rule or be king. Psalm’s “unto all generations” opens the phrase “for ever and ever” into a concrete span: no generation stands outside this reign.
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