What Does Psalm 135:3 Mean?
Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good; make music for his name, for it is sweet.
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
Praise the LORD; for the LORD is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant.THE KEY
The song does not make the LORD good; it rises because his nature is already good, and that response is pleasant.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s goodness is already present for you; your praise does not cause it. His name is his nature, and your song attends to what is good. Praise gives that goodness a voice, and the singing itself is pleasant.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You do not have to earn the LORD’s goodness by praising him; the verse names that goodness before it names the song.
THE ROOT
נָעִים
na’im
GROWS FROM
נעם
pleasantness, delight, or what is beautiful to experience
“pleasant” in this verse is na’im. The same root appears in the word translated “beauty” in Psalm 27:4. The pleasantness of praise here is connected to the LORD’s beauty: what the song delights in is also what can be beheld.
ALSO GROWS
na’im: pleasant, delightful
נָעִים
This is the word describing the pleasantness of praise in this verse.
no’am: pleasantness, delight; rendered “beauty” in Psalm 27:4
נֹעַם
It links the pleasure of singing to the beauty of the LORD that the reader beholds.
זָמַר
zamar
GROWS FROM
זמר
to make music or sing
“make music for his name” in this verse is zamar. The verse’s singing and the Hebrew word for a psalm grow from the same root. Praise here is not only an inward judgment about goodness; it takes musical form and gives that goodness a voice.
ALSO GROWS
mizmor: a psalm or musical composition
מִזְמוֹר
The psalm itself belongs to the same word family as the singing praised in this verse.
zimrah: song or music
זִמְרָה
This branch makes audible the shared root beneath singing and praise.
THE PATTERN
Praise rises from goodness already present and gives that goodness a voice.
For the LORD is good; his faithful love reaches to the ages, and his steadiness holds from generation to generation.Extend your hands in thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his faithful love endures for the ages.Through him, then, let us always carry up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.THE THREAD
One thing I ask of the LORD, this I will seek; that I may settle in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the sweetness of the LORD, and to search out in his temple.Psalm 135 calls praise נָעִים (na’im, pleasant), while Psalm 27 calls the LORD’s beauty נֹעַם (no’am, pleasantness), forms from the same root נעם. The root joins singing to beholding: the pleasantness praised here is also the LORD’s beauty.
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