What Does Psalm 96:5 Mean in the King James?

For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.

Psalm 96:5 · KJV

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 Hebrew lets the nations’ elohim (⁨אֱלֹהִים⁩, elohim, gods) echo as elilim (⁨אֱלִילִים⁩, elilim, worthless idols), while the LORD is identified by making the heavens.

THE MEANING

The verse weighs what seems powerful by what it brings into being: the heavens stand as the LORD’s work, while the gods the nations name are empty. It speaks now wherever a created power appears ultimate, distinguishing the source of reality from what is treated as its source.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

A name or display of power does not make something the source of reality. The verse undoes the belief that the powers people gather around can equal the One who made the heavens.

THE ROOT

עָשָׂה

ʿāsâ

GROWS FROM

עשה

ʿ-ś-h

To do, make, or bring about.

The verse identifies the LORD through an act: the heavens are what the LORD has made. Its sound-play between ⁨אֱלֹהִים⁩ (elohim, gods) and ⁨אֱלִילִים⁩ (elilim, worthless idols) sets claimed divinity beside emptiness; the echo is a wordplay, not a claim that the words share a root.

ALSO GROWS

maʿăśeh: A work, deed, or thing made.

מַעֲשֶׂה

The heavens are a work that points back to the one who made them.

ʿōśeh: One who acts or makes.

עֹשֶׂה

The verse contrasts the maker, known by what the maker does, with idols that are named as gods.

THE PATTERN

What is made cannot rival the source who made it.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:1 · KJVThe opening verse names the heavens and earth as creation, establishing the distinction between the Maker and what is made.

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.

Psalm 115:4 · KJVAn idol is exposed as a made object, dependent on the hands that formed it.

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

Romans 1:25 · KJVThe verse names the reversal of the pattern: treating the creature as greater than the Creator.

THE THREAD

Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.

Jeremiah 10:11 · KJV

Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew verb ⁨עָשָׂה⁩ (ʿāsâ, made) to expose the test Psalm 96 compresses: the claimed gods did not make the heavens and the earth. Creation becomes a measure of reality, not a contest of names.

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