What Does Psalm 115:14 Mean?
The LORD adds upon you, upon you and upon your children.
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
The LORD shall increase you more and more, you and your children.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb translated “increase” means “add,” and the repeated “upon you” carries that addition onward to your children.
THE MEANING
The LORD adds to you, and the addition reaches your children too. The repeated “you” places the increase upon you, then names your children as part of its reach. What grows here extends beyond one generation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that increase is only personal: the verse names your children within the reach of what is added to you.
THE ROOT
יֹסֵף
yōsēp
GROWS FROM
יסף
y-s-f
To add, increase, or continue.
“adds” in this verse is yōsēp. English “increase” can suggest a quantity going up; יָסַף (yāsaph) means “to add,” and the same root gives Joseph his name, “may he add.” The verse repeats “upon you,” then carries that addition to your children, making increase something that extends through a household.
ALSO GROWS
Yosef: “He adds” or “May he add.”
יוֹסֵף
In Genesis 30:24, this same root becomes Joseph’s name, linking the act of adding with the arrival of another child.
tosefet: Addition or supplement.
תּוֹסֶפֶת
This noun keeps the root’s sense of something being added, echoing the verse’s picture of increase as addition reaching beyond you.
THE PATTERN
What the LORD adds in one life can extend through households, generations, and further fruit.
And she called his name Joseph, may he add, and said, The LORD shall add to me another son.May the LORD God of your fathers add to you a thousand times as many as you are, and bless you, as he has spoken to you!Now the one who supplies seed to the sower supplies bread for eating, and fills out your sown seed, and makes grow the fruits of your alignment.THE THREAD
And she called his name Joseph, may he add, and said, The LORD shall add to me another son.Joseph’s name comes from the same יסף (y-s-f) root rendered “increase” here: the verse says the LORD adds. In Genesis, that word is held in a child’s name; here it reaches you and your children.
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