What Does Psalm 148:5 Mean?
Let them praise the name of the LORD. For he commanded, and they were created.
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
Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created.THE KEY
The created world praises the LORD’s name by bearing the nature of the One whose command brings it into being.
THE MEANING
The created order answers the LORD’s command with its existence, so praise is woven into what it is. This reaches you now: your life is received before it is performed, and the world around you is already filled with the life that answers its Maker.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that praise begins only when a human voice produces it; the verse places praise inside the created world itself.
THE ROOT
יְהַלְלוּ
yehalelu
GROWS FROM
הלל
halal
Praise, celebrate, or commend.
“Let them praise” in this verse is yehalelu. The verb calls the created beings themselves to praise, while its branches show praise as both song and acclamation. Set beside their being created, praise is more than words spoken afterward: it is creation’s response to the name it bears.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise, or a song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
This branch shows praise taking voiced form, while the verse extends the call to the whole created order.
hallelu-yah: Praise Yah.
הַלְלוּ־יָהּ
The familiar acclamation grows from the same praise-root and makes explicit whose name creation is called to praise.
צִוָּה
tsivvah
GROWS FROM
צוה
tsavah
To command, charge, or appoint.
“commanded” in this verse is tsivvah. The verse places the command and the creatures’ coming into being in one causal sequence: he commands, and they are created. Their existence is received; it does not originate in them.
ALSO GROWS
mitzvah: A commandment or instruction.
מִצְוָה
This branch carries the same root into instruction, revealing command as direction that takes effect.
tsav: A command or precept.
צַו
This shorter form echoes the verse’s decisive command, the word from which the created order proceeds.
THE PATTERN
What the LORD speaks or commands comes into being, and the created order answers with its existence.
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.For he says, and it comes to be; he commands, and it stands.By trust we perceive that the ages were fitted together by the word of God, so that what is seen did not come out of what appears.THE THREAD
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is lifted high; his majesty is above the earth and the heavens.The same call returns, now naming the reason: the LORD’s name is excellent, and creation’s praise answers that nature. “Name” is shem (שֵׁם), meaning name or nature; verse 13 brings the hidden meaning of verse 5 into the open.
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