What Does Psalm 29:6 Mean?
He makes them skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox.
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
He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.THE KEY
The Hebrew says the LORD makes the mountains dance, what looks immovable becomes living motion under his voice.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s voice reaches what seems fixed: Lebanon and Sirion leap like young animals. Even the largest, most settled thing in your world is not beyond that voice’s reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what is deeply set can never move is undone by the mountains themselves: Lebanon and Sirion leap at the LORD’s voice.
THE ROOT
וַיַּרְקִידֵם
wayyarqidem
GROWS FROM
רקד
To leap or dance; here, in a causative form, to make them leap.
“skip” in this verse is wayyarqidem. The Hebrew verb says the LORD makes them leap, and the same root names dancing elsewhere. The mountains’ motion is more than a picture of shaking: they are caught in a sudden, living dance at the LORD’s voice.
ALSO GROWS
raqdu: They leaped or danced.
רָקְדוּ
Psalm 114:4 uses this form for mountains leaping like rams, making the same root’s mountain-motion explicit.
reqod: Dancing.
רְקוֹד
Ecclesiastes 3:4 uses this noun for dancing, showing the movement here carries the root’s dance-like sense.
לְבָנוֹן
Levanon
GROWS FROM
לבן
To be white or become white; lavan means “white.”
Lebanon’s name is commonly linked to לבן (lavan, “white”), perhaps recalling its snow or pale slopes. The verse gives this bright, named height a startling motion: even Lebanon leaps.
ALSO GROWS
lavan: White.
לָבָן
This word preserves the whiteness commonly heard in Lebanon’s name.
levanah: The moon, understood as “the white one.”
לְבָנָה
This branch carries the root’s image of brightness, echoing the bright mountain named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
The voice of the LORD reaches what seems fixed and sets creation in motion.
The mountains leapt like rams, and the hills like lambs.For you shall go out in joy, and be carried forth in wholeness. The mountains and the hills shall burst into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their palms.And waking, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Be silent. Be muzzled. And the wind wore itself out, and a great calm came.THE THREAD
The mountains leapt like rams, and the hills like lambs.Psalm 114:4 uses the same Hebrew root, רקד (raqad, “leap/dance”), for mountains springing like rams. Here that same movement reaches Lebanon and Sirion at the LORD’s voice, drawing even the great heights into creation’s response.
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