What Does Psalm 50:5 Mean?
Gather to me my faithful ones, those who cut my covenant over the slaughtered offering.
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
Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.THE KEY
The phrase translated “have made a covenant” literally names people who have “cut” the covenant, joining belonging to the mark of sacrifice.
THE MEANING
This verse gathers you into a covenant whose wording carries the cut of an offering. Its “saints” are faithful ones, people named through faithful love. The sacrifice makes the bond tangible: covenant here is not abstract, but enacted through what is offered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the idea that covenant is only a spoken promise: here the bond carries the mark of sacrifice.
THE ROOT
כֹּרְתֵי
kōretê
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
To cut or sever.
“cut my covenant” in this verse is kōretê. The Hebrew phrase literally describes “covenant-cutters,” revealing a cut beneath the English “made.” The covenant is pictured as a bond marked through sacrifice.
ALSO GROWS
kārat: To cut or sever.
כָּרַת
This is the verb behind the covenant-cutting phrase in the verse.
nikhrat: Be cut off or severed.
נִכְרַת
The same root can describe severance, giving the covenant image a tangible edge: a bond made through cutting.
חֲסִידַי
ḥasîday
GROWS FROM
חסד
ḥ-s-d
Faithful, steadfast love.
The gathered people are called by a word from the root of faithful love. “Saints” here carries a relational quality: they are the faithful ones belonging to the covenant.
ALSO GROWS
ḥesed: Faithful love.
חֶסֶד
This is the root word that gives the gathered people their name of fidelity.
ḥasid: A faithful or loyal one.
חָסִיד
This singular form shows the person characterized by faithful love; the verse gathers such people as a community.
זֶבַח
zebaḥ
GROWS FROM
זבח
z-b-ḥ
To slaughter as a sacrifice.
“the slaughtered offering” in this verse is zebaḥ. The covenant is cut “by sacrifice,” joining the covenant bond to an offering of life. The same root forms the word for the altar where sacrifice is made.
ALSO GROWS
zāvaḥ: To slaughter or offer as a sacrifice.
זָבַח
The verb names the offering that marks the covenant in this verse.
mizbēaḥ: Altar, the place of sacrifice.
מִזְבֵּחַ
The altar grows from the same root, linking the covenant offering to the place where it is presented.
THE PATTERN
Covenant gathers a people through a bond marked by sacrificial offering.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many, for the release of shortcomings.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.Genesis uses the same cut-covenant expression hidden beneath “made a covenant.” The nearby divided offering gives that wording a visible edge, opening Psalm 50’s phrase “by sacrifice” as part of the covenant’s nature.
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