What Does Psalm 87:3 Mean?

Weighty things are spoken of you, O city of God. Selah.

Psalm 87:3 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah.

THE KEY

The city’s “glory” is weight: the Hebrew says weighty things are spoken of the city of God.

THE MEANING

You meet a city described through words that carry weight: the city of God is spoken of as honored and substantial. The verse locates its identity in belonging to God, then sets Selah beside the claim, a pause in which those words can land.

THE ROOT

נִכְבָּדוֹת

nikbadot

GROWS FROM

כבד

To be heavy or weighty.

“Weighty” in this verse is nikbadot. The Hebrew word translated “glorious” grows from the root for weight. The verse holds more than brightness: the city is spoken of as carrying honor and substance.

ALSO GROWS

kavod: Weight, honor, glory.

כָּבוֹד

The same root often rendered “glory” shows why the verse’s “glorious” carries the sense of weight.

kaved: Heavy.

כָּבֵד

This branch gives the physical sense beneath the city’s honor: what is weighty has presence and consequence.

מְדֻבָּר

medubar

GROWS FROM

דבר

To speak; to communicate a matter.

“spoken” in this verse is medubar. The city’s honor is voiced. In Hebrew, the word-family for speaking also includes davar, meaning a word or matter, so speech here carries content, not just sound.

ALSO GROWS

davar: Word, matter, thing.

דָּבָר

This branch links speaking with a substantive matter: the city is described through words that carry weight.

dibber: Speak.

דִּבֵּר

This verbal form names the act that gives voice to the city’s honored standing.

THE PATTERN

The Bible describes honor and glory as weight that can be recognized, rendered, or borne.

Give to the LORD the weight of his name; bow down to the LORD in set-apart splendor.

Psalm 29:2 · SDVThe verse uses the same Hebrew word-family for glory, presenting honor as something due to God’s name.

Therefore the LORD God of Israel says, I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before me for the ages. But now the LORD says, Far be it from me. For those who give me weight, I will give weight; those who make light of me shall be made light.

1 Samuel 2:30 · SDVThe Hebrew root for honor echoes the weight in Psalm 87:3: to honor is to treat as weighty.

For our light pressure, which is for a moment, works for us a heavy weight, the weight of the ages, overflowing measure upon measure.

2 Corinthians 4:17 · SDVPaul makes the weight within glory explicit, joining the same images of honor and substance.

THE THREAD

Who is this King of weight? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.

Psalm 24:8 · SDV

“Glory” here comes from the same ⁨כבד⁩ (k-b-d) root family as the weighty things spoken of in Psalm 87:3. Psalm 24 names the LORD as the King of that glory, drawing the city’s honor back to the one to whom it belongs.

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