What Does Judges 5:5 Mean?
The mountains flow from the face of the LORD; this Sinai from the face of the LORD, God of Israel.
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 mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel.THE KEY
Even Sinai is described with a word for flowing streams: before the LORD, solidity becomes motion.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s presence is so immediate that even mountains are pictured as flowing before him. Sinai stands inside that image too, making the verse speak to what feels immovable now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that something cannot yield because it feels immovable is undone here: even a mountain flows before the LORD.
THE ROOT
נָזְלוּ
nāzəlû
GROWS FROM
נזל
To flow, stream down, or distill.
“flow” in this verse is nāzəlû. The verb translated “melted” carries the motion of flowing down. The same root describes streams from Lebanon and instruction dropping like dew, so Sinai’s solidity becomes moving water before the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
nozlim: Flowing waters.
נֹזְלִים
In Song of Solomon, the same root names streams from Lebanon; here it pictures mountains flowing before the LORD.
tizzal: To drop or distill, as dew.
תִּזַּל
Deuteronomy uses this root for instruction descending like dew, showing the same flow in a gentle, nourishing form.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s presence unsettles what looks immovable, and even mountains become moving ground.
The hills melt like wax before the face of the LORD, before the face of the Master of all the earth.And the mountains melt under him, and the valleys split open, as wax before the fire, and as waters poured down a steep descent.whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”THE THREAD
A spring of gardens, a well of living waters, and dripping streams from Lebanon.“Streams” comes from the same Hebrew root נזל (nazal, “to flow”) as “melted” in Judges. The root links Sinai’s flowing mountains with the living waters from Lebanon: both images show what is fixed becoming flow.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us