What Does Psalm 114:6 Mean?
Mountains, you leap like rams; hills, like lambs.
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
Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?THE KEY
The verse turns the landscape’s supposed immovability into dance: even mountains move like living creatures.
THE MEANING
What looks immovable in your world is not beyond the reach of the LORD’s presence; here, mountains leap. The little hills join the same motion, like lambs following the rams.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what is fixed in your life cannot move.
THE ROOT
רָקְדוּ
raqdu
GROWS FROM
רקד
r-q-d
To dance, leap, or skip.
“you leap” in this verse is raqdu. The verb belongs to the language of dancing and leaping, so the mountains are not merely displaced; they move like living bodies. The parallel image of lambs brings the little hills into the same startling motion.
ALSO GROWS
raqdu: They danced, leaped, or skipped.
רָקְדוּ
This is the form used of the mountains in Psalm 114:4 and 114:6, making their movement a repeated image in the psalm.
yarkidem: He makes them dance or leap.
יַרְקִידֵם
Psalm 29:6 uses this form for Lebanon and Sirion, extending the same dance-like movement to other mountains.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s presence and action make even the earth’s most fixed forms move.
He makes them skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox.The hills melt like wax before the face of the LORD, before the face of the Master of all the earth.And the heaven parts like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island are moved from their places.THE THREAD
He makes them skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox.Psalm 29:6 uses the same Hebrew root for Lebanon and Sirion as they skip like a calf. The repeated root shows the mountains not merely changing position, but dancing.
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