What Does Psalm 147:5 Mean?
Great is our Lord, and great in power; his discernment is without number.
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
Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.THE KEY
The Hebrew says there is no number to God’s discernment, joining understanding to a measure no counting can reach.
THE MEANING
Great power and unbounded discernment belong together here. What exceeds your count does not exceed the reach of God’s understanding, which remains present where your own grasp ends.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what you cannot understand is beyond all understanding.
THE ROOT
תְּבוּנָה
tevunah
GROWS FROM
ב־י־ן
b-y-n
To discern or perceive distinctions, to see between things.
The word translated “understanding” grows from a root that also means “between.” It points to discernment that sees distinctions, not just a store of information; here, no number marks its limit.
ALSO GROWS
bin: To understand or discern.
בִּין
This verb shows that understanding is an act of perception, the root’s central movement.
bein: Between.
בֵּין
The shared root connects understanding with perceiving what lies between or distinguishes one thing from another.
binah: Understanding or discernment.
בִּינָה
This related noun keeps the same sense of insight that distinguishes and comprehends.
מִסְפָּר
mispar
GROWS FROM
ס־פ־ר
s-p-r
To count or recount.
“is without number” in this verse is mispar. The Hebrew phrase is literally “there is no number” to his understanding. The language sets counting beside discernment: no tally can mark where this understanding ends.
ALSO GROWS
safar: To count or recount.
סָפַר
The verb gives the direct sense behind the word for number.
sefer: A book or written record.
סֵפֶר
A record gathers what can be counted or recounted, sharpening the contrast with understanding that has no number.
sippur: An account or telling.
סִפּוּר
Like counting, an account can enumerate what is known, but cannot set a boundary around this discernment.
THE PATTERN
God’s knowing exceeds every human measure and remains unexhausted by counting or searching.
Many are the works you make, O LORD my God, the wonders, and your plans toward us. They cannot be laid in rows before you. If I would recount them and speak them, they are more than can be numbered.Have you not perceived? Have you not heard and responded? The God of the ages, the LORD, who created the edges of the earth, does not faint, nor tire; there is no searching of his discernment.O the depth of the riches of both wisdom and knowledge of God! How beyond searching out are his judgments, and how beyond tracking are his ways!THE THREAD
Have you not perceived? Have you not heard and responded? The God of the ages, the LORD, who created the edges of the earth, does not faint, nor tire; there is no searching of his discernment.Isaiah repeats the same Hebrew word for understanding, tevunah, and says there is no searching of it. Together, the verses place great power beside discernment that no search or count can exhaust.
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