What Does Psalm 40:5 Mean?
Many are the works you make, O LORD my God, the wonders, and your plans toward us. They cannot be laid in rows before you. If I would recount them and speak them, they are more than can be numbered.
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
Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.THE KEY
God’s acts and intentions toward you exceed every way of arranging, telling, or counting them.
THE MEANING
God’s work and thoughts toward you are present in a fullness you cannot arrange into a complete account. Even when you speak of them, what you can name is smaller than what is there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that if you cannot identify and measure what God is doing toward you, then nothing is being done.
THE ROOT
מִסַּפֵּר
missapper
GROWS FROM
ספר
s-p-r
Count, recount, tell.
The root can carry recounting as well as counting. What cannot be numbered also cannot be fully told: the verse’s speech runs up against the scale of God’s deeds and intentions toward us.
ALSO GROWS
sāpar: Count, enumerate.
סָפַר
This branch brings out the numerical limit: God’s works and thoughts exceed every tally.
sippēr: Recount, narrate.
סִפֵּר
The same root reaches verbal retelling, so the limit includes a complete telling as well as a final number.
וּמַחְשְׁבֹתֶיךָ
u-maḥshevōteḵā
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-sh-b
Think, devise, reckon, calculate.
“your plans” in this verse is u-maḥshevōteḵā. The word translated “thoughts” belongs to a root for devising and reckoning, so these are considered purposes toward us, not vague ideas. Its range of calculation also echoes the verse’s language of numbering: what God intends toward us outruns what we can account for.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāshav: Think, devise, reckon.
חָשַׁב
The root verb gives “thoughts” the sense of considered intention.
ḥeshbon: Account, calculation.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
This branch links thought with accounting, echoing the verse’s limits of reckoning and number.
maḥăshāvāh: Thought, plan.
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This noun shows how the root can name both a thought and a formed purpose.
נִפְלְאֹתֶיךָ
nifla’otekha
GROWS FROM
פלא
p-l-ʾ
Be extraordinary, wondrous, beyond ordinary capacity.
“the wonders” in this verse is nifla’otekha. The word describes acts that exceed ordinary human measure. The same root appears where something is called “too hard” for human capacity, making wonder here a matter of scale as well as beauty.
ALSO GROWS
pele: Wonder, extraordinary act.
פֶּלֶא
This branch names an act that exceeds ordinary expectation, like the works described in the verse.
nifla: Extraordinary, wondrous.
נִפְלָא
This form carries the same quality as the plural “wonderful works” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
God’s works and intentions exceed the limits of human description and measurement.
Is any word too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will turn back to you, at this season of life, and Sarah will have a son.Who does great things beyond searching, and wonders without number.And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which, if they were written down one by one, I suppose that even the ordered world itself could not make room for the books that would be written. Amen.THE THREAD
How they grow, your works, O LORD! And your plans run very deep.The phrase “thy thoughts,” מַחְשְׁבֹתֶיךָ (maḥshevōteḵā, “your thoughts”), comes from חשב (ḥ-sh-b, “think, devise, reckon”), the same root as the thoughts in Psalm 40:5. Both verses place God’s works beside those thoughts, joining the scale of what is done to the depth of its intention.
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