What Does Psalm 136:13 Mean?
To him who cuts the Sea of Reeds into parts, for his faithful love reaches to 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
To him which divided the Red sea into parts: for his mercy endureth for ever:THE KEY
The sea becomes a way when it is cut into parts: the opening happens within the barrier itself.
THE MEANING
The divided sea shows a way taking shape inside what first appears unbroken. Faithful love holds this opening across the ages. This same movement is alive now: what blocks passage can open into a route.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a way exists only after every obstacle disappears: here, passage begins within the divided barrier.
THE ROOT
גֹּזֵר
gōzēr
GROWS FROM
גזר
g-z-r
To cut or divide.
“cuts” in this verse is gōzēr. The same root names the one cutting and the pieces that result, binding act and outcome in a single word-family. The waters become sections, making a passage imaginable where English gives the image of a divided sea.
ALSO GROWS
gōzēr: One who cuts or divides.
גֹּזֵר
This form names the one who opens the sea by cutting it into sections.
gĕzārîm: Pieces or sections.
גְּזָרִים
This is what the sea becomes: divided portions through which passage can open.
חַסְדּוֹ
ḥasdô
GROWS FROM
חסד
ḥ-s-d
Loyal, steadfast kindness; faithful love.
“for his faithful love reaches to the ages” in this verse is ḥasdô. Chesed names the loyal love that sustains and acts; its related forms describe acting kindly and the faithful person. The refrain sets the sea’s opening within a continuing bond of faithful love.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāsad: To act kindly or loyally.
חָסַד
This verbal form presents faithful love as an action, matching the opening described in the verse.
ḥāsîd: A faithful or devoted person.
חָסִיד
This branch shows chesed as a lived quality, not only a feeling.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance opens a way by dividing the barrier, while faithful love endures through the passage.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.Thus says the LORD, who sets a way in the sea, and a trodden path in the strong waters.By trust they stepped across the Red Sea as over dry land, which the Egyptians, making the attempt, were swallowed down.THE THREAD
And makes Israel pass through its middle, for his faithful love reaches to the ages.The next verse makes the purpose of the dividing explicit: a way opens through the middle. Its repeated refrain binds passage to faithful love, showing the opening as the form that love takes here.
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