What Does Psalm 68:15 Mean?
The mountain of God is as the mountain of Bashan; a mountain of many backs, as the mountain of Bashan.
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
The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill as the hill of Bashan.THE KEY
The verse gives God’s hill the scale of Bashan’s peaks, while the next verse shows that God’s choice, not height alone, marks his dwelling.
THE MEANING
God’s hill stands beside Bashan’s imposing heights, so the image gives divine presence a mountain’s scale. The next verse turns the reader’s attention from towering peaks to the place the LORD chooses to inhabit.
THE ROOT
גַּבְנֻנִּים
gabbunim
GROWS FROM
גבן
g-b-n
To be humped, arched, or convex.
“high hill” in this verse is gabbunim. The word translated “high” evokes a raised, peaked contour, not height alone. The same word returns in the next verse, where Bashan’s imposing ridges meet the question of which hill God chooses as his dwelling.
ALSO GROWS
gibben: Hump-backed or arched in form.
גִּבֵּן
This related form shows that the root describes a contour that rises or curves outward, which gives the mountain image more shape than the English word “high” conveys.
gabbun: Humped or peaked.
גַּבְנוּן
This related form carries the same raised contour that the verse applies to the mountain ridges.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses mountain height to show the scale of divine presence, while God’s choice identifies the dwelling.
Why do you leap, you many-backed mountains? This is the mountain God desires to settle in, and indeed the LORD will settle in it forever.And the LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, to the head of the mount, and the LORD called Moses up to the head of the mount, and Moses climbed up.And it shall come to pass in the hindmost days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be set firm at the head of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills, and all nations shall flow toward it.THE THREAD
Why do you leap, you many-backed mountains? This is the mountain God desires to settle in, and indeed the LORD will settle in it forever.The same Hebrew word translated “high hills” recurs as the psalm turns from Bashan’s peaks to the hill the LORD chooses. The repeated root shifts the focus from a mountain’s contour to where God chooses to dwell.
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