What Does Psalm 119:160 Mean?
The head of your word is truth, and every judgment of your alignment stands for the ages.
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
Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls truth the head of God’s word: it is both its beginning and the center from which its enduring judgments take their shape.
THE MEANING
Truth stands at the head of God’s word, and its judgments endure through every age. That rightness is present now; time does not make it expire.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that truth is only a passing perspective, or that what is right changes with each age.
THE ROOT
רֹאשׁ
rōsh
GROWS FROM
ראש
Head, top, or chief; by extension, first or beginning.
The Hebrew opens with רֹאשׁ דְּבָרְךָ אֱמֶת, literally “the head of your word is truth.” “Beginning” carries the sense of firstness, while “head” also reveals truth as the word’s governing center.
ALSO GROWS
rēʾshīt: Beginning, first portion
רֵאשִׁית
This word opens Genesis, linking the beginning with what stands first or at the head.
rishon: First, former
רִאשׁוֹן
This branch carries the same sense of firstness, showing how ראש can describe both a beginning and what comes first.
דְּבָרְךָ
devar’kha
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; a word or matter.
דָּבָר can mean both a spoken word and a matter or thing. The verse’s “word” is thus bound to what is spoken and to the matter that remains true.
ALSO GROWS
dāvar: Word, matter, thing
דָּבָר
The same root joins what is said with the matter being spoken of.
dibbēr: He spoke
דִּבֵּר
This verbal form makes the spoken quality of דְּבָרְךָ audible in the root itself.
צִדְקֶךָ
tsidqekha
GROWS FROM
צדק
To be right or just; alignment with what is right.
The Hebrew calls these judgments judgments “of your righteousness,” tying them to the rightness that shapes them. The verse presents enduring judgment as a continuing expression of alignment.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Righteousness, justice
צֶדֶק
This noun names the rightness that the judgments express.
tsaddiq: Righteous, just
צַדִּיק
This form describes someone aligned with justice, carrying the root from a standard into a person.
tsedaqah: Righteousness, justice
צְדָקָה
This branch shows the same alignment expressed in action.
THE PATTERN
God’s word has truth at its source, and that truth remains dependable across time.
Your alignment is the alignment of the ages, and your instruction is truth.The grass dries, the flower withers, but the word of our God stands for the ages.Set them apart through your truth; your word is truth.THE THREAD
Your alignment is the alignment of the ages, and your instruction is truth.Both verses use אֱמֶת (ʾemet, truth). Here truth stands at the head of God’s word; there it names the instruction itself, while righteousness is called everlasting, one repeated word binds truth, instruction, and permanence.
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