What Does Psalm 135:18 Mean?
Those who make them become like them, and so does everyone who leans his weight on them.
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 that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.THE KEY
The thing you trust does not just receive your dependence; it lends you its likeness.
THE MEANING
What you make into a source of security becomes a pattern for your own life. The makers and the trusters share the same outcome: they take on the likeness of what cannot see, hear, or act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
“I can make or rely on something for security without being shaped by it.”
THE ROOT
בָּטַח
bāṭaḥ
GROWS FROM
בטח
b-ṭ-ḥ
To trust, feel secure, or have confidence.
“leans his weight on” in this verse is bāṭaḥ. This root holds trust together with felt security: the verse is about what you count on for safety, not just what you say you believe. Its branches show that reliance takes shape in the one who places their security there.
ALSO GROWS
beṭaḥ: Security; securely.
בֶּטַח
The root’s language of security makes clear that trust here means placing safety in the idols.
mibṭaḥ: Confidence; refuge.
מִבְטָח
This branch names what a person relies on, sharpening the verse’s claim that the chosen refuge shapes the one who trusts it.
עֹשֵׂיהֶם
ʿōśêhem
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-ś-h
To do or make.
“make” in this verse is ʿōśêhem. The word for “makers” comes from the broad verb for doing and making. Its branch מַעֲשֶׂה (maʿăśeh, work or deed) links the maker to what is made: the verse says the maker comes to resemble the work of their own hands.
ALSO GROWS
maʿăśeh: Work, deed, or thing made.
מַעֲשֶׂה
It names the work produced by an act of making, connecting the makers directly to the objects they form.
ʿōśeh: One who does or makes.
עֹשֶׂה
This active form keeps the maker inside the root’s action: the person doing the making is included in the verse’s likeness.
THE PATTERN
What a person treats as a source of security can become the image and limit of the person who relies on it.
Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.Blessed is the man who leans his full weight upon the LORD, and the LORD is his leaning. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, stretching out his roots beside the flowing stream; he shall not see when heat comes, but his leaf shall be green; he shall not fret in the year of drought, and he shall never move away from bearing fruit.But we all, with uncovered faces, mirror the weight of the LORD, and are being reshaped into the same image, ever increasing in weight, even as from the breath of the LORD.THE THREAD
Lean your full weight upon the LORD for ages upon ages; for in the LORD, the LORD, is the rock of ages.Isaiah 26:4 uses the same Hebrew root בָּטַח (bāṭaḥ, trust or be secure) as “trusteth” here. It names the LORD as the Rock of ages, bringing the question of the verse into view: what is the ground of your security?
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