What Does Psalm 150:6 Mean?
Let every thing that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.
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 every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the same praise-root: every breath is included in it, and the Psalm’s final words voice it.
THE MEANING
Your breath places you within the living chorus: every breathing thing is included in the call to praise the LORD. The verse ends the Psalms by widening praise to all life, then repeating the call itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that praise belongs only to words, music, or religious settings: this verse extends the call to every breathing thing.
THE ROOT
הָלַל
halal
GROWS FROM
הלל
H-L-L
praise, celebrate
“praise the LORD” in this verse is halal. The two praise forms share this root: the first extends praise across every breath, while the last sounds the summons. English keeps the phrases distinct, but the root makes them one continuing act, from all life to the Psalm’s final call.
ALSO GROWS
tehallel: praise; let it praise
תְּהַלֵּל
This is the verb attached to every breath, so the root places praise within the scope of all life.
hallelu-Yah: praise Yah
הַלְלוּ־יָהּ
The closing call repeats the same praise-root, making the verse voice the act it names.
הַנְּשָׁמָה
haneshamah
GROWS FROM
נשם
N-Š-M
breathe; pant
The word names breath as the shared mark of living creatures; the same noun appears in Job 33:4 as the breath God gives. Here praise reaches every creature through the breath that marks its life.
ALSO GROWS
nishmat: breath of; the construct form of neshamah
נִשְׁמַת
Job 33:4 uses this form in “the breath of the Almighty,” linking the life-breath here with the breath God gives.
nasham: breathe hard; pant
נָשַׁם
The verb keeps the root bodily and active: the verse speaks of living breathers, not an abstract possession.
THE PATTERN
Life received as breath widens into praise that includes every creature.
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The breath of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty keeps me alive.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
The breath of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty keeps me alive.Job’s נִשְׁמַת (nishmat, “breath of”) and the Psalm’s הַנְּשָׁמָה (haneshamah, “the breath”) both grow from נשם (n-sh-m, “breathe”). Job names breath as given life; the Psalm opens that life into praise.
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