What Does Psalm 95:7 Mean?
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will hear and respond to his voice.
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
For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,THE KEY
You are already held in his hand when his voice meets you today.
THE MEANING
You belong to God as part of the people he feeds and tends, held like sheep within reach of his hand. His voice addresses you today, and hearing it means receiving and responding to that voice in the present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that God’s voice belongs only to the past or to a distant message; the verse places hearing in today.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׁמְעוּ
tishme'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear or listen; here, to hear and respond.
“hear and respond” in this verse is tishme'u. The Hebrew places “today” beside hearing: this is a voice met in the present. The root carries listening that answers, so the sheep’s closeness to God’s hand and their hearing belong to one relationship: held, then addressed.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The familiar call “Hear” carries this same root: hearing is attentive response, not sound simply passing by.
shemu'ah: A report or news; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names what is received by hearing; in the verse, the received voice meets the listener today.
מַרְעִיתוֹ
mar'ito
GROWS FROM
רעה
r-ʿ-h
To tend, shepherd, or feed; to pasture.
English makes “pasture” sound like a place and “shepherd” a separate role, while Hebrew grows both from רעה: tending, shepherding, and feeding. You belong not only in a place of provision, but within a living act of care.
ALSO GROWS
ro'eh: Shepherd; one who tends.
רֹעֶה
The caretaker comes from the same root as the pasture, so the image carries active tending.
mir'eh: Pasture or grazing place.
מִרְעֶה
This related noun names the feeding ground, linking care with sustenance.
THE PATTERN
God’s care forms belonging as a flock: it feeds and holds the sheep, whose relationship is expressed in hearing the shepherd’s voice.
Perceive that the LORD is God; it is he who made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.He feeds his flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs in his arm, carries them against his chest, and gently leads the ones who nurse.My sheep hear and respond to my voice, and I perceive them, and they follow me.THE THREAD
Hear and respond, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD.“Hear” here is שְׁמַע (shema, hear and respond), from the same שמע root as “hear” in Psalm 95:7; both address a people in relation to “the LORD our God.” Psalm 95 makes that hearing intimate: the voice belongs to the one whose flock is already held in his care.
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