What Does Psalm 135:17 Mean?
They have ears, and do not incline them; nor is there any breath in their mouths.
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
They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths.THE KEY
An ear can be present while listening is absent, just as a mouth can have its shape without the breath that makes it speak.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now through the contrast between an image’s visible organs and its absence of listening or breath: its form cannot answer you. Living speech and hearing belong to breath-filled responsiveness, not appearance alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that something shaped like a listening or speaking being is alive and able to answer.
THE ROOT
יַאֲזִינוּ
yaʾazinu
GROWS FROM
אזן
ʾ-z-n
to give ear; to listen
“do not incline them” in this verse is yaʾazinu. The verb for listening shares its consonants with אֹזֶן (ʾozen), “ear,” binding the organ to its responsive act. The idols have the shape of hearing, but they do not give ear.
ALSO GROWS
ʾozen: ear
אֹזֶן
The noun names the organ whose active counterpart is the verse’s listening verb.
heʾezin: listen; give ear
הֶאֱזִין
The same root makes listening an act of the ear, not merely possession of one.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
r-w-ḥ
moving air; breath or wind
“nor is there any breath” in this verse is ruach. The mouth has no רוּחַ (ruach), “breath”, the same word can also name wind. Scripture also joins it to חַיִּים (chayyim), “life,” in the phrase “breath of life”: the image has the shape of speech, but no living breath within it.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: wind
רוּחַ
The word for breath also names moving air in the world beyond the mouth.
ruach chayyim: breath of life
רוּחַ חַיִּים
This phrase links ruach with life, sharpening what is absent from the image’s mouth.
THE PATTERN
Breath marks living responsiveness, while speech granted to an image can counterfeit that sign.
They have ears, but they do not hear; they have nostrils, but they do not smell.Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every refiner is shamed by the carved image, for his poured image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.And it is given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that it speaks, and he makes as many as do not bow down to the image of the beast be killed.THE THREAD
Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every refiner is shamed by the carved image, for his poured image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.“Breath” here is רוּחַ (ruach), the same Hebrew word used in this psalm. The psalm locates its absence in the images’ mouths; Jeremiah names the same absence throughout the graven image.
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