What Does Psalm 69:30 Mean?
Let me praise the name of God in song, and let me grow him great with thanksgiving.
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 will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving.THE KEY
Thanksgiving does not make God greater; it gives audible form to the greatness already carried by God’s name.
THE MEANING
Your song and gratitude bring God’s nature into speech, so praise and thanks become two ways of voicing the same recognition. The verse holds a tension in “magnify”: God is already great, yet you give that greatness voice through thanksgiving.
THE ROOT
וַאֲגַדְּלֶנּוּ
va’agaddelenu
GROWS FROM
גדל
To grow, become great, or make great.
“grow him great” in this verse is va’agaddelenu. The verb carries the sense of making great or exalting. Here, thanksgiving voices God’s greatness; the singer makes it perceptible without making it originate in the singer.
ALSO GROWS
gadol: Great.
גָּדוֹל
This branch makes explicit the greatness the verse voices through thanksgiving.
migdal: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
A tower rises into view, echoing how the song makes God’s greatness visible in speech.
תּוֹדָה
todah
GROWS FROM
ידה
To acknowledge, give thanks, or praise.
“thanksgiving” in this verse is todah. Todah comes from yadah, the language of acknowledgment and thanks. Gratitude here is more than a feeling: it names God’s nature aloud, joining the song in giving praise a voice.
ALSO GROWS
yadah: To acknowledge, give thanks, or praise.
יָדָה
This is the verb beneath todah, linking gratitude with spoken recognition.
lehodot: To give thanks or acknowledge.
לְהוֹדוֹת
This related verb keeps the same movement of gratitude as acknowledgment.
אֲהַלְלָה
ahalelah
GROWS FROM
הלל
To praise, celebrate, or boast.
Halal is voiced celebration, not praise held only as a private thought. Its branches connect praise with both a song of praise and the call to praise Yah, fitting the verse’s joining of song and thanksgiving.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise or a song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
This branch brings the root directly into the verse’s image of praise carried by song.
hallelu-yah: Praise Yah.
הַלְלוּ־יָהּ
The same praise-root forms a voiced call to celebrate God.
THE PATTERN
Praise gives audible form to recognition of God’s nature through song and thanksgiving.
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.Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with a clamor of praise; lift your hands to him, and bless his nature.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
Some lean their full weight on chariots, and some on horses; but we remember in the nature of the LORD our God.Both verses use שֵׁם (shem, “name” as nature): Psalm 69 gives that name voice through song and thanks, while Psalm 20 places trust in it. Read together, praise is audible recognition of the same character on which trust rests.
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