What Does Psalm 89:11 Mean?
The heavens are yours, the earth is yours also; the world and its fullness, you laid their foundation.
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 heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them.THE KEY
Even the world’s fullness rests on a foundation God laid.
THE MEANING
The heavens above you and the earth beneath you belong to God, along with the world and everything that fills it. The ground of the life you inhabit is not self-made; it is founded by God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that the world is ownerless, or that its abundance belongs finally to whoever can claim it.
THE ROOT
יְסַדְתָּם
yəsadtām
GROWS FROM
יסד
To lay a foundation; to establish.
“laid their foundation” in this verse is yəsadtām. The verse’s claim of belonging reaches from the heavens to the inhabited world because God is the one who laid its base. The world’s fullness is tied to the foundation beneath it, not detached from it.
ALSO GROWS
yesod: Foundation, basis.
יְסוֹד
It makes the image in founded concrete: the world rests on a base that God establishes.
mosad: Foundation, established institution.
מוֹסָד
It carries the root’s movement from laying a base to establishing something that can stand.
מְלֹאָהּ
məlōʾāh
GROWS FROM
מלא
To fill; to be full.
“fulness” in this verse is məlōʾāh. The Hebrew links fullness with the act of filling: the world and what fills it belong together. What makes the world abundant is included in the same belonging as the world itself.
ALSO GROWS
maleʾ: To be full; to fill.
מָלֵא
The verb shows fullness as something that fills the world, not just an abstract quality.
milluʾ: Filling; that which fills.
מִלּוּי
This noun echoes the verse’s focus on everything that fills the world.
THE PATTERN
The world and its abundance remain within God’s belonging because God lays its foundation.
Where were you when I laid the footings of the earth? Declare it, if you have discernment.A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and what fills it; the inhabited world, and those who settle in it.For the earth is the Lord's, and what fills it.THE THREAD
Where were you when I laid the footings of the earth? Declare it, if you have discernment.Founded here and foundations there grow from יסד (y-s-d), meaning to lay a foundation or establish. Psalm 89:11 says the world rests on God’s founding; Job’s question reveals that the reader inhabits ground they did not establish.
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