What Does Psalm 90:2 Mean in the King James?
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
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 mountains are not the beginning: the verse calls even the world’s oldest structures born, while God is God across every age.
THE MEANING
The ground beneath your life has a beginning; God does not begin with it. Mountains are born, earth and world are brought forth, and God is God from age to age. What seems ancient and immovable is still within that larger span.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The world is not ultimate simply because it feels older and steadier than you; even the mountains have a beginning.
THE ROOT
מֵעוֹלָם
mēʿōlām
GROWS FROM
עלם
ʿ-l-m
עלם (ʿ-l-m) means to hide or be concealed; עוֹלָם (ʿolam) names a remote or age-long span, commonly associated with what lies beyond sight.
The KJV’s “everlasting to everlasting” repeats the Hebrew word עוֹלָם (ʿolam, age): from age to age. The verse places God beyond the visible horizon of beginnings and endings, present across every age.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālam: to be hidden or concealed
עָלַם
The root evokes what lies beyond view, fitting the age-spanning reach of the verse.
neʿelam: hidden, out of sight
נֶעֱלָם
Its shared root gives “age” a sense of a span whose far edge cannot be seen.
וַתְּחוֹלֵל
vatteḥōlēl
GROWS FROM
חול
ḥ-w-l
To writhe or travail; in this form, to bring forth.
The verb translated “formed” carries the language of labor and bringing forth. The verse describes the earth and world as emerging through travail, echoing its picture of mountains being born.
ALSO GROWS
yeḥōlēl: makes give birth; causes to travail (Psalm 29:9)
יְחוֹלֵל
The same root describes the LORD’s voice making the hinds calve, so creation’s formation here carries the force of birth.
ḥōlāltî: I was brought forth (Proverbs 8:24)
חוֹלָלְתִּי
This related form makes the root’s birth imagery explicit: something comes into being through travail.
יֻלָּדוּ
yullādu
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To give birth or bring forth.
“brought forth” in this verse is yullādu. The mountains are not merely old objects; the Hebrew says they were born. Together with the laboring verb for the earth, this root makes creation’s emergence the verse’s central image.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
A child is one who has been brought forth; the same birth-root names the mountains’ arrival.
hōlîd: to beget, cause to be born
הוֹלִיד
This causative branch makes the connection between bringing forth and the beginning of something unmistakable.
THE PATTERN
What comes into being has a beginning, while God’s presence spans every age.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.THE THREAD
But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children;Both verses repeat עוֹלָם (ʿolam, age) in the same from-to phrase. Psalm 90:2 places God across every age before creation’s birth; Psalm 103:17 places the LORD’s faithful love across those same ages.
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