What Does Psalm 29:1 Mean?
A Psalm of David. Give to the LORD, you sons of the mighty; give to the LORD weight and 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
A Psalm of David. Give unto the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and strength.THE KEY
In Hebrew, glory is weight: giving the LORD glory means naming where true substance and strength reside.
THE MEANING
The verse places you among the mighty and names the LORD as the bearer of weight and force. “Glory” carries the sense of weight, so giving glory recognizes what has substance. Strength joins that weight as power rendered to the LORD.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that might is self-grounding: the verse locates glory and strength with the LORD.
THE ROOT
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy; to carry weight.
The same root names heaviness, honor, and glory: כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight/glory) carries more than visual splendor; it names what has weight and consequence. The command presents praise as recognition of the LORD’s weight.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
The physical sense of weight sits inside the verse’s word for glory.
kibbed: To honor, show respect.
כִּבֵּד
Honor shares this root’s sense of assigning weight, illuminating glory as recognition of significance.
עֹז
ʿoz
GROWS FROM
עזז
ʿ-z-z
To be strong, fierce, or prevail.
“strength” in this verse is ʿoz. This root carries force and prevailing, pairing kavod’s weight with the capacity to act. The verse gathers both the significance and the power of the LORD under the same act of acknowledgment.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaz: Strong, fierce.
עַז
Its forceful sense clarifies the kind of strength named in the verse.
ʿazuz: Mighty, powerful.
עָזוּז
This related form carries the same force into the language of might.
THE PATTERN
Weight and strength are recognized as belonging to God, and even ordinary action can carry that recognition.
Bring to the LORD, families of the peoples; bring to the LORD weight and strength.He gives power to the faint, and to those without might he multiplies strength.So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the end that God is given weight.THE THREAD
The voice of the LORD is upon the waters. The God of weight thunders. The LORD is upon many waters.Verse 1 names the LORD’s כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight/glory) as what is rendered to him; verse 3 uses the same word for the God whose voice thunders over the waters. The poem lets that weight become audible as thunder, so glory is felt as force as well as named in praise.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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