What Does Psalm 77:17 Mean?
The thick clouds pour out waters; the skies give forth a voice; your arrows also go abroad.
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 clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad.THE KEY
What English separates into rain, thunder, and lightning, the verse gathers into one storm in motion.
THE MEANING
Water pours, the heavens give sound, and arrows range through the sky as one display of divine force. Beside Psalm 18:14, those arrows align with lightning, so the storm’s power is audible, visible, and moving.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the heavens are mute scenery: here the skies give sound, and their arrows move.
THE ROOT
נָתְנוּ
natnu
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, place.
“give forth a voice” in this verse is natnu. The Hebrew verb means “they gave,” where the KJV says “sent out”: the skies give sound as an act of expression. This root also carries the sense of placing, so the sound is pictured as something the heavens put into the open.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: A gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
The same root turns giving into a concrete thing received; here the skies give sound.
netinah: An act of giving or donation.
נְתִינָה
This noun keeps the action of giving visible in the line: the sound comes from what the skies give.
יִתְהַלָּכוּ
yithallāḵū
GROWS FROM
הלך
h-l-k
Walk, go, move along.
“go abroad” in this verse is yithallāḵū. The arrows are said to walk or go about, not simply to appear: the storm advances through the sky. That movement makes the rain and sound part of an unfolding event, with the arrows traveling through it.
ALSO GROWS
halikhah: Walking or movement on foot.
הֲלִיכָה
It keeps the root’s sense of movement in view as the arrows travel across the sky.
holekh: One who is going or walking.
הוֹלֵךְ
The moving form echoes the verse’s image of arrows that go about rather than remain still.
THE PATTERN
When Scripture pictures divine power in a storm, water, thunder, and lightning act together rather than as separate signs.
And Moses stretched out his rod toward heaven, and the LORD gave thunder and hail, and fire walked along the ground, and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt.He sends his arrows and scatters them; he flashes out lightning in abundance and stirs them into uproar.And the messenger takes the censer, and fills it with fire from the altar, and throws it into the earth; and there are voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and a shaking.THE THREAD
The LORD thunders in the heavens, and the Most High gives his voice; hailstones and coals of fire.Psalm 77:17 uses נָתְנוּ (natnu, “they gave”) for the skies giving a sound; Psalm 18:13 uses the same root, נָתַן (natan, “give”), for the Highest giving his voice. Its thunder and hail make the connection audible: the storm’s sound is also described as God’s voice.
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