What Does Psalm 150:1 Mean?
Praise the LORD. Praise God in his set-apart place; praise him in the expanse of his strength.
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
Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.THE KEY
Praise is not confined to the sanctuary: the same call reaches into the vast expanse of the LORD’s power.
THE MEANING
The reader encounters praise in two scales at once: the sanctuary’s set-apart nearness and the firmament’s wide expanse. The verse holds both under one call to praise the LORD.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that praise belongs only inside a sacred building: the verse places it in the sanctuary and in the firmament.
THE ROOT
הַלְלוּ
hallelu
GROWS FROM
הלל
To praise, celebrate, or boast.
“Praise the LORD” in this verse is hallelu. The call to praise appears three times in this one verse, giving it a reach that carries from the sanctuary into the expanse. The same root also forms the word for a song of praise and the call “Hallelujah”, praise is both the act and its voiced expression.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise; a song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
The shared root shows praise here as something voiced and made audible, not merely an inward feeling.
hallelu-Yah: Praise Yah.
הַלְלוּיָהּ
This familiar call is built from the same praise-root heard three times in the verse.
בְּקָדְשׁוֹ
beqodsho
GROWS FROM
קדש
To set apart, consecrate, or mark as distinct.
“in his set-apart place” in this verse is beqodsho. The sanctuary is named through the language of what is set apart. Here that consecrated place stands beside the open firmament: praise belongs both where something is specially marked and across the vastness of creation.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; distinct.
קָדוֹשׁ
It shares the root that names the sanctuary, making its set-apart character visible.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a consecrated place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
This related word makes explicit the shared root between the sanctuary and setting apart.
רָקִיעַ
raqia
GROWS FROM
רקע
To beat out or spread across a surface.
“in the expanse” in this verse is raqia. The word carries the image of something spread out into an expanse. Paired with the sanctuary, it opens praise from a set-apart place into the broad reach of the LORD’s power.
ALSO GROWS
raqa: To beat out or spread out.
רָקַע
This verb shares the root behind “firmament,” linking the noun to the act of extending something across space.
riqqu'im: Beaten-out plates or hammered work.
רִקּוּעִים
This related form carries the root’s image of material spread by striking, illuminating the expansive sense in “firmament.”
THE PATTERN
Praise spans the set-apart sanctuary, the heavens, and all creation.
Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights.To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.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
Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights.Both verses repeat the same Hebrew praise-root, הַלַל (halal), and set that call in expansive places. Psalm 148 names the heavens and heights, opening Psalm 150’s sanctuary-and-firmament pairing across the whole sky.
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