What Does Psalm 148:10 Mean?
Beasts, and all cattle; crawling things, and winged birds.
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
Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:THE KEY
The praise call includes every kind of creaturely life, from beasts and herds to the smallest thing moving along the ground and the birds on the wing.
THE MEANING
The creatures around you belong within the praise of God, whether they graze, crawl, or fly. Their place in the verse does not depend on speaking like a human or serving a human purpose.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that praise belongs only to speaking humans; the verse includes creatures whose praise is not human speech.
THE ROOT
חַיָּה
chayyah
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live, be alive
The word translated “beasts” grows from the root for life, carrying the sense of a living creature beneath its specific animal category. Beside “all cattle,” it gathers wild and domesticated animal life into the same praise call.
ALSO GROWS
chay: Living, alive
חַי
This related form makes the root’s life-language audible inside the word for beasts.
chayyim: Life
חַיִּים
The same root names life itself, widening the verse’s list beyond animal labels to the livingness they share.
רֶמֶשׂ
remes
GROWS FROM
רמשׂ
r-m-ś
To move or creep
“crawling things” in this verse is remes. The Hebrew word is tied to movement, so the verse includes life as it moves close to the ground. The list reaches creatures that are easily overlooked alongside beasts, herds, and winged birds.
ALSO GROWS
rāmaś: To move, creep
רָמַשׂ
The verb behind the noun shows that the category is marked by the creature’s movement.
rōmēś: Moving or creeping
רֹמֵשׂ
This participial form pictures a creature in motion, echoing the verse’s inclusion of life at ground level.
THE PATTERN
The call to praise extends across the living world, including creatures beyond human speech.
Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and all that creeps within them.And every created thing in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and in the sea, and all that is in them, I hear them saying, Blessing, and honor, and weight, and power, be to the one who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb, into the ages of the ages.THE THREAD
And God said, "Let the earth bring out living soul after its kind, cattle, creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind." And it was so.Genesis uses the same Hebrew word for “creeping thing,” רֶמֶשׂ (remes), meaning a moving or creeping creature. The life brought forth from the earth appears here within the call to praise.
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