What Does Psalm 136:2 Mean?
O extend your hands in thanks to the God of gods, 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
O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever.THE KEY
Gratitude here recognizes that the God above every power is known by faithful love that reaches through every age.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you now: God’s faithful love remains through every age. Giving thanks names that reality aloud; the praise rests on who God is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that God’s love is temporary or runs out when the present age changes.
THE ROOT
חֶסֶד
ḥesed
GROWS FROM
ח־ס־ד
Faithful love, steadfast care, or covenant loyalty.
“for his faithful love reaches to the ages” in this verse is ḥesed. The Hebrew word is chesed, a faithful love that holds through relationship and time. “For ever” translates le’olam, “through the age” or “through the ages”: the line presents this love as enduring across every age.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāsîd: A faithful or devoted person.
חָסִיד
The person is described by the same quality of faithful care named here.
ḥasidim: Faithful or devoted ones.
חֲסִידִים
The plural carries that quality into a community, showing chesed as more than an abstract feeling.
הוֹדוּ
hôdû from yādâ
GROWS FROM
י־ד־ה
Acknowledge, confess, or praise; in this form, give thanks.
“extend your hands in thanks” in this verse is hôdû from yādâ. The root opens “thanks” into acknowledgment: the speaker names what is true about God. Gratitude here is recognition of the one whose chesed reaches through every age.
ALSO GROWS
yādâ: Acknowledge, confess, or praise.
יָדָה
The call to give thanks carries the sense of openly recognizing God’s nature.
tôdâ: Thanksgiving; also a thank offering.
תּוֹדָה
This noun from the same root shows thanksgiving as an expressed act of acknowledgment.
THE PATTERN
God’s faithful love remains through every age, and gratitude gives voice to that constancy.
O extend your hands in thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his faithful love reaches to the ages.But the faithful love of the LORD is from age to age upon those in awe of him, and his alignment is to the children's children.And his faithful love is for those in awe of him, from generation to generation.THE THREAD
And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,The Hebrew word translated “goodness” here is chesed, the same word rendered “mercy” in this psalm. What Exodus names as abundant in God is what the refrain says remains through every age.
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