What Does Psalm 135:18 Mean in the King James?
They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The thing you trust does not just receive your dependence; it lends you its likeness.
THE MEANING
What you make into a source of security becomes a pattern for your own life. The makers and the trusters share the same outcome: they take on the likeness of what cannot see, hear, or act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
“I can make or rely on something for security without being shaped by it.”
THE ROOT
בָּטַח
bāṭaḥ
GROWS FROM
בטח
b-ṭ-ḥ
To trust, feel secure, or have confidence.
“trusteth” in this verse is bāṭaḥ. This root holds trust together with felt security: the verse is about what you count on for safety, not just what you say you believe. Its branches show that reliance takes shape in the one who places their security there.
ALSO GROWS
beṭaḥ: Security; securely.
בֶּטַח
The root’s language of security makes clear that trust here means placing safety in the idols.
mibṭaḥ: Confidence; refuge.
מִבְטָח
This branch names what a person relies on, sharpening the verse’s claim that the chosen refuge shapes the one who trusts it.
עֹשֵׂיהֶם
ʿōśêhem
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-ś-h
To do or make.
“make” in this verse is ʿōśêhem. The word for “makers” comes from the broad verb for doing and making. Its branch מַעֲשֶׂה (maʿăśeh, work or deed) links the maker to what is made: the verse says the maker comes to resemble the work of their own hands.
ALSO GROWS
maʿăśeh: Work, deed, or thing made.
מַעֲשֶׂה
It names the work produced by an act of making, connecting the makers directly to the objects they form.
ʿōśeh: One who does or makes.
עֹשֶׂה
This active form keeps the maker inside the root’s action: the person doing the making is included in the verse’s likeness.
THE PATTERN
What a person treats as a source of security can become the image and limit of the person who relies on it.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.THE THREAD
Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:Isaiah 26:4 uses the same Hebrew root בָּטַח (bāṭaḥ, trust or be secure) as “trusteth” here. It names the LORD as the Rock of ages, bringing the question of the verse into view: what is the ground of your security?
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