What Does Psalm 149:5 Mean in the King James?
Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds.
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 verse places faithful love’s ringing joy on the bed itself, within the weight of glory.
THE MEANING
Your rejoicing is not confined to public strength or a standing body; it reaches the bed, where the body lies down. The people called saints here are ḥasidim, persons marked by faithful love, and their song rings within kavod, the weight of glory. Rest does not make that joy absent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that praise belongs only to public, upright moments: joy can sound from the bed.
THE ROOT
חֲסִידִים
ḥasidim
GROWS FROM
חסד
Faithful love; loyal devotion.
The word translated “saints” is ḥasidim, from the same root as ḥesed, faithful love. Their name carries the character of that love into the verse’s scene of singing and rest.
ALSO GROWS
ḥesed: Faithful love
חֶסֶד
This is the root’s central noun; the people called ḥasidim bear its character.
ḥasid: A faithful or devoted one
חָסִיד
This singular form shows the root’s connection between faithful love and the person marked by it.
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; to give weight.
Kavod carries weight at the center of what English calls glory. The verse places joy within what has substance, rather than making glory only a display of splendor.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy
כָּבֵד
This adjective makes the root’s sense of weight explicit.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty
כִּבֵּד
Honor grows from recognizing the weight carried by the one being honored.
יְרַנְּנוּ
yerannenu
GROWS FROM
רנן
To ring out in a cry of joy; to sing aloud.
“sing aloud” in this verse is yerannenu. This root gives the song a ringing, voiced quality. The joy is not merely inward contentment; it comes out as sound, even from the bed.
ALSO GROWS
rinah: A joyful cry or song
רִנָּה
The noun names the ringing sound carried by the singers’ action.
ranen: To sing out joyfully
רַנֵּן
This verbal form shares the root’s sense of voiced, audible joy.
THE PATTERN
Song keeps speaking where the body lies down or the setting closes in.
When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.THE THREAD
To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.Psalm 30:12 uses the same Hebrew כָּבוֹד (kavod), meaning weight or glory. There, glory itself sings and refuses silence, sharpening this verse’s picture: the weight in which the faithful ones rejoice is also where their song rises.
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