What Does Psalm 29:5 Mean?

The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; and the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

Psalm 29:5 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

The voice of the LORD breaketh the cedars; yea, the LORD breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

THE KEY

The LORD’s voice breaks what appears unbreakable.

THE MEANING

The LORD’s voice meets the strongest things in your world with force that breaks them. The verse repeats the fracture against Lebanon’s cedars, making clear that even what stands tall and firm can be broken.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that whatever looks strongest is therefore unbreakable.

THE ROOT

שֹׁבֵר

shover

GROWS FROM

שבר

shavar

To break, shatter, or fracture.

“breaks” in this verse is shover. The Hebrew repeats this root in the second clause, pressing the fracture against Lebanon’s cedars. The voice is not merely loud: it cracks what stands tall and firm.

ALSO GROWS

shever: Breakage, fracture.

שֶׁבֶר

The noun makes the root’s action visible as the break itself: the cedar’s strength gives way.

shavur: Broken, shattered.

שָׁבוּר

This related form names the state left by the breaking the verse describes.

THE PATTERN

The LORD’s voice shakes or dissolves what seems fixed and powerful.

The nations roar, the kingdoms totter; he gives his voice, and the earth melts.

Psalm 46:6 · SDVHere, too, the LORD’s uttered voice makes even the earth give way.

God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things, which we cannot perceive.

Job 37:5 · SDVThe voice is heard as thunder, carrying a power beyond what the listener can comprehend.

whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”

Hebrews 12:26 · SDVThe voice that shakes the earth reaches even what appears to be the highest and most stable order.

THE THREAD

And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, the high and the lifted, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,

Isaiah 2:13 · SDV

The same cedars of Lebanon appear here as an image of height and elevation. Psalm 29 shows the LORD’s voice breaking those towering trees, revealing that what stands high can still be brought low.

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