What Does Psalm 95:6 Mean?
Enter, let us bow down and kneel before the face of the LORD who makes us.
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
O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.THE KEY
What English calls “worship” begins in Hebrew as a body lowering itself, and the verse names that lowering again as bowing and kneeling.
THE MEANING
This invitation meets you now: coming before your maker involves your whole embodied self, not only your thoughts. Bowing, bending, and kneeling give recognition a visible shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief this undoes is that worship can be only an inward thought or spoken praise; the verse describes it as a bodily act.
THE ROOT
נִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה
nishtachaveh
GROWS FROM
שחה
To bow low or prostrate oneself.
“bow down” in this verse is nishtachaveh. The verb translated “worship” carries the body into prostration. The next verbs deepen that movement, so worship here is not detached from posture: the body itself bows before the maker.
ALSO GROWS
vayishtachu: And he bowed down.
וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ
This form of the same root makes the bodily action explicit in Exodus 34:8.
lehishtachavot: To bow down or prostrate oneself.
לְהִשְׁתַּחֲוֹת
The infinitive form preserves the same movement as an action of lowering oneself.
נִבְרְכָה
nivrekhah
GROWS FROM
ברך
To bend the knee; also, to bless.
The verb translated “kneel” belongs to the root also used for blessing, and the related noun means “knee.” Here kneeling and blessing share a word-family: bodily lowering is part of the verse’s language of blessing.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: Knee.
בֶּרֶךְ
The related noun makes the posture contained in “kneel” visible in the root-family.
berakhah: Blessing.
בְּרָכָה
This branch joins blessing to the bent-knee posture named in the verse.
וְנִכְרָעָה
venikhra'ah
GROWS FROM
כרע
To bend down or kneel.
“kneel” in this verse is venikhra'ah. This verb adds another bodily motion between prostration and kneeling. The verse does not use one vague gesture for reverence; it stacks the movements of lowering the body.
ALSO GROWS
kar'u: They knelt or bent down.
כָּרְעוּ
This form shows the root describing people lowering themselves.
kore'a: One who is kneeling or bending down.
כֹּרֵעַ
This related form keeps the root’s focus on a body in the act of bending.
THE PATTERN
Approaching the divine is pictured as embodied lowering: the body bends, falls, or kneels before the one it recognizes.
And Moses hurried, and bent his head to the earth, and bowed down.All kings bow down before him, and all nations serve him.That at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of things in heaven, and things on the earth, and things under the earth.THE THREAD
And Moses hurried, and bent his head to the earth, and bowed down.The word translated “worshipped” comes from the same Hebrew root as “worship” in Psalm 95. Here the bowed head toward the earth makes the root’s bodily movement visible.
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