What Does Psalm 71:19 Mean?
Your alignment, God, reaches to the heights, you who make great things. God, who is like you?
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
Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high, who hast done great things: O God, who is like unto thee!THE KEY
What rises beyond measure here is God’s alignment, recognized in deeds no one else can match.
THE MEANING
God’s alignment reaches beyond measure, and its reality appears in great acts. The question “who is like unto thee?” makes those acts grounds for recognizing God’s uniqueness now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that God’s righteousness is only an unreachable standard, detached from what God does; here, it is made visible in great acts.
THE ROOT
צֶדֶק
tsedeq
GROWS FROM
צדק
To be right or just; to stand in alignment.
“your alignment” in this verse is tsedeq. The word holds more than private virtue: its root reaches into justice and right order. The verse presents God’s alignment as something so high that no rival compares.
ALSO GROWS
tsaddiq: A righteous person; one who is aligned or in the right.
צַדִּיק
The same root describes a person by the alignment that marks their character.
tsedaqah: Righteousness, justice, right order.
צְדָקָה
This branch shows that the alignment in the verse also carries the sense of just order.
מָרוֹם
marom
GROWS FROM
רום
To be high, rise, or be exalted.
“reaches to the heights” in this verse is marom. The verse gives God’s alignment the image of height: its reach exceeds ordinary measure. This height sits beside the great deeds, joining vast scope with visible action.
ALSO GROWS
ram: High or exalted.
רָם
This form carries the same elevation expressed by “very high.”
herim: Raised or lifted up.
הֵרִים
The causative branch shows the root’s movement from being high to raising something up.
גְּדֹלוֹת
gedolot
GROWS FROM
גדל
To grow or become great.
The “great things” belong to a root of growing or becoming great, giving the deeds a sense of scale and increase. The verse places that greatness alongside God’s height and alignment.
ALSO GROWS
gadol: Great or large.
גָּדוֹל
This is the same root in its familiar form for what is great.
migdal: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
A tower is something raised up, extending the root’s sense of greatness into a visible structure.
THE PATTERN
God’s uniqueness becomes visible through works whose scale no rival can match.
Who is like you among the mighty ones, O LORD? Who is like you, majestic in being set apart, awe-inspiring in praises, doing wonders?There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, and nothing is like your works.Now to him who is strong enough to do beyond all that we ask or perceive, overflowing past measure, according to the strength that works in us.THE THREAD
Your alignment is like the mountains of God; your judgments are a great deep. O LORD, you deliver humankind and beast.“Righteousness” comes from the same root, צדק (tsedeq), alignment. Psalm 36 gives that alignment the scale of mountains and deep waters, opening Psalm 71’s “very high” as something vast and life-preserving.
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