What Does Psalm 29:2 Mean?
Give to the LORD the weight of his name; bow down to the LORD in set-apart splendor.
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
Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.THE KEY
The LORD’s glory is the weight of his nature, and worship is the bow that recognizes it.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s name holds his nature, and that nature carries weight. Worship is a bowing response, and the beauty is the splendor of what is set apart. The verse places you now before the LORD, whose worth is recognized rather than produced.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that worship is only spoken praise: here, worship is also the bowing posture that answers the weight of the LORD’s nature.
THE ROOT
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to be honored.
שֵׁם (shem, name as nature) points to the LORD’s disclosed character, while כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight or glory) says that character carries substance. The verse’s giving is recognition of that weight.
ALSO GROWS
heavy: Having weight or substance.
Shows the concrete sense carried beneath the English word “glory.”
honor: To recognize or treat as weighty.
Links giving the LORD glory with recognizing the substance of his nature.
הִשְׁתַּחֲווּ
hishtachavu
GROWS FROM
שחה
To bow down or bend low.
“bow down” in this verse is hishtachavu. The verb names the bodily act of bowing low, so “worship” here includes a posture as well as reverence. The weight of the LORD’s nature meets a lowered body.
ALSO GROWS
bow down: Lower oneself in homage.
Makes the verse’s response to the LORD’s weight a bodily action.
prostrate: Bend or lie low before another.
Shows the depth of the posture contained in the word translated “worship.”
בְּהַדְרַת
b'hadrat
GROWS FROM
הדר
Splendor, majesty, or adornment.
The phrase joins hadrat, splendor or adornment, to קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh, set-apartness): beauty is the splendor belonging to what is set apart. The worshipper bows within that set-apart splendor.
ALSO GROWS
splendor: Majesty or impressive beauty.
Reveals that the verse’s beauty carries a sense of majesty.
adornment: That which gives something distinction or beauty.
Shows the phrase as a setting marked by the splendor of what is set apart.
THE PATTERN
Scripture ties honor to weight: to honor is to treat someone or something as weighty.
Give weight to your father and your mother, that your days may lengthen upon the ground which the LORD your God gives you.Therefore the LORD God of Israel says, I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before me for the ages. But now the LORD says, Far be it from me. For those who give me weight, I will give weight; those who make light of me shall be made light.For our light pressure, which is for a moment, works for us a heavy weight, the weight of the ages, overflowing measure upon measure.THE THREAD
Bring to the LORD the weight of his name; lift a gift, and enter his courts.The same root כבד (k-b-d, weight or heaviness) anchors “glory” in both verses. Psalm 96:8 links that weight to coming into the LORD’s courts, while Psalm 29:2 shows the response as bowing in the splendor of what is set apart.
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