What Does Psalm 36:5 Mean?
Your faithful love, O LORD, is in the heavens; and your steadiness reaches to the clouds.
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
Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.THE KEY
The verse places faithful love and steadfastness beyond the farthest reach your eyes can measure.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s faithful love is present now, and the LORD’s steadiness extends beyond what you can see. Your limits do not set the limit of either.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that divine care becomes thin or unreliable when your need reaches beyond your sight.
THE ROOT
חֶסֶד
chesed
GROWS FROM
ח־ס־ד
To act with loyal kindness; faithful love.
Chesed (חֶסֶד, faithful love) is committed kindness, not a passing feeling. The verse pictures this love as filling the heavens, far beyond the edge of human sight.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāsad: To act with loyal kindness.
חָסַד
This verbal branch shows chesed as something expressed through faithful action.
ḥāsîd: A faithful or devoted person.
חָסִיד
This branch names a person by the loyal devotion that characterizes them.
אֱמוּנָה
emunah
GROWS FROM
א־מ־ן
Firmness, steadiness, reliability.
Emunah (אֱמוּנָה, firmness or steadiness) comes from a root of what is firm and reliable. Paired with chesed, it presents the LORD’s love as both loyal and steady, something you can lean your full weight on.
ALSO GROWS
’āmēn: Firmly; truly; so be it.
אָמֵן
Amen carries the sense of affirming what is firm and trustworthy.
he’emin: To trust, to lean your full weight on.
הֶאֱמִין
This branch shows the response made possible by what is steady enough to trust.
ne’eman: Reliable, steady.
נֶאֱמָן
This branch describes someone or something as dependable.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s faithful love exceeds every measure of distance or height.
For your faithful love is great up to the heavens, and your truth up to the clouds.For as the heavens are high above the earth, so mighty is his faithful love over those in awe of him.Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus the Anointed One, our Lord.THE THREAD
O extend your hands in thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his faithful love reaches to the ages.The word rendered “mercy” in both verses is chesed (חֶסֶד, faithful love). Psalm 36 pictures that love spanning the heavens; Psalm 136 says it endures through the ages, joining vast reach with lastingness.
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