What Does Psalm 135:5 Mean?
For I perceive that the LORD is great, and our Lord is above all gods.
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
For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.THE KEY
The verse places every godlike power below the LORD’s greatness, so presence does not mean equality.
THE MEANING
You can recognize the LORD’s greatness while rival powers remain present; none shares the same height. That recognition gives the world a center that does not shift with the number or force of competing powers.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that whatever appears powerful must therefore be ultimate.
THE ROOT
גָּדוֹל
gādōl
GROWS FROM
גדל
To grow or become great.
The Hebrew word for “great” carries the sense of something grown large. Here, the LORD’s greatness sets the scale by which every rival power is seen as lesser.
ALSO GROWS
gādal: To grow or become great.
גָּדַל
The shared root shows that greatness is expressed as magnitude, not merely a title.
migdāl: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
A tower rises above its surroundings, echoing the verse’s image of the LORD above every rival.
יָדַעְתִּי
yādaʿtî
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“I perceive” in this verse is yādaʿtî. The Hebrew yada can describe knowing through encounter, so this is personal recognition rather than bare information. The verse presents the LORD’s greatness as something recognized, not something made true by the speaker’s judgment.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or perceive.
יָדַע
This is the verb’s base form and keeps the verse’s first-person knowing connected to recognition.
daʿat: Knowledge.
דַּעַת
This related noun shows the same root’s movement from knowing to what is known.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s greatness is recognized by placing every rival power beneath God’s unmatched rule.
Now I perceive that the LORD is greater than all gods, for in the thing in which they boiled up against them, he was above them.For great is the LORD, greatly to be praised, and held in awe above all gods.One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in you all.THE THREAD
Now I perceive that the LORD is greater than all gods, for in the thing in which they boiled up against them, he was above them.Both verses use yada, יָדַע, “to know or perceive,” in the speaker’s declaration of recognition. Exodus makes the contrast concrete: even powers that act proudly remain beneath the LORD.
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