What Does Psalm 21:13 Mean?
Rise up, LORD, in your strength; let us sing and praise your might.
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
Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power.THE KEY
The song recognizes the LORD’s height as already rooted in his own strength.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s strength belongs wholly to the LORD, and that strength is the ground of exaltation. The verse lets you hear a shared song giving voice to the power that is already his.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that praise makes God powerful: the LORD is exalted in his own strength, and the song acknowledges what is already his.
THE ROOT
עֹז
ʿoz
GROWS FROM
עזז
To be strong or mighty.
This strength is not merely a quality held in reserve: a branch of the same root, מָעוֹז (maʿoz), means stronghold or refuge. The verse places the LORD’s own strength beneath the song as secure ground.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaz: Strong, fierce.
עַז
This branch makes strength a quality of force, not a resource the singers supply.
maʿoz: Stronghold, refuge.
מָעוֹז
It reveals strength as a place of security from which the song can rise.
גְּבוּרָה
gevurah
GROWS FROM
גבר
To be mighty, prevail, or become greater.
English “power” can sound abstract, while gevurah carries the sense of might that prevails. Its branches connect power both to the mighty one and to the act of overcoming.
ALSO GROWS
gibbor: Mighty one, warrior.
גִּבּוֹר
The song names power as might embodied in one who can prevail.
gavar: To prevail, be mighty.
גָּבַר
This verb shows the active force inside the verse’s praise of power.
רוּמָה
rumah
GROWS FROM
רום
To rise, be high, or exalt.
“rise up” in this verse is rumah. The verse calls the LORD into the place of height, then grounds that height in his own strength. Exaltation here recognizes what already belongs to him.
ALSO GROWS
ram: High, exalted.
רָם
This branch names the elevated state the verse proclaims.
marom: Height, high place.
מָרוֹם
It gives “exalted” the sense of being set in a place above.
THE PATTERN
Praise names divine might as God’s own and returns honor to its source.
The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my deliverance. This is my God, and I will make him a dwelling; my father's God, and I will lift him high.Praise him for his strong deeds; praise him according to the abundance of his greatness.Saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and weight, and blessing.THE THREAD
The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my deliverance. This is my God, and I will make him a dwelling; my father's God, and I will lift him high.Exodus uses the same Hebrew strength word, עֹז (ʿoz), and directly binds it to song. Psalm 21 gives voice to that same connection: the LORD’s strength is named, and the community sings.
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