What Does Psalm 66:17 Mean?
I call out to him with my mouth, and he is lifted high beneath my tongue.
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
I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue.THE KEY
Here, the mouth’s cry reaches toward God while the tongue raises him high in praise.
THE MEANING
Your mouth can call toward God and your tongue can extol him in the same moment. The verse holds need and praise together: calling is also an act of addressing God as worthy of being raised high.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the idea that a cry to God is only an expression of need: the verse holds the cry and the exaltation together.
THE ROOT
וְרוֹמַם
weromam
GROWS FROM
רום
Rise, be high; raise or exalt.
“lifted high” in this verse is weromam. The word translated “extolled” carries the image of raising high. The tongue gives voice to God as the one raised high, a connection that the English word can leave less visible.
ALSO GROWS
ram: High, exalted.
רָם
This adjective makes the root’s language of height plain: to extol is to speak of God as high.
marom: Height, heights.
מָרוֹם
This noun preserves the same image of height beneath the act of exalting.
herim: Raised, lifted up.
הֵרִים
This verb shows the root’s movement from being high to raising something up.
קָרָאתִי
qarati
GROWS FROM
קרא
Call out, summon, or read aloud.
“call out to” in this verse is qarati. Beneath “cried” is the language of calling out and addressing. The root also carries the sense of reading or proclaiming aloud, so the verse’s speech joins a call toward God with words that publicly honor him.
ALSO GROWS
qore: One who calls or reads aloud.
קוֹרֵא
This related form keeps calling and spoken reading within the same family of voice.
miqra: A public reading, proclamation, or convocation.
מִקְרָא
The call can become a spoken summons that gathers others to hear.
THE PATTERN
Speech reaches toward God both by calling to him and by voicing praise.
A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed. I bless the LORD at all times, and his praise is continually in my mouth.Through him, then, let us always carry up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.THE THREAD
David’s Psalm of praise. I lift you up, my God, O King, and I bless your name through the ages and the ages.Psalm 145:1 uses the same root, רום (rum), in “extol,” making the verbal echo in “he was extolled” visible. It shows the tongue’s act as praise spoken through the language of raising high.
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