What Does Psalm 96:5 Mean?
For all the gods of the nations are nothings; but the LORD made the heavens.
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 all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.THE KEY
The Hebrew lets the nations’ elohim (אֱלֹהִים, elohim, gods) echo as elilim (אֱלִילִים, elilim, worthless idols), while the LORD is identified by making the heavens.
THE MEANING
The verse weighs what seems powerful by what it brings into being: the heavens stand as the LORD’s work, while the gods the nations name are empty. It speaks now wherever a created power appears ultimate, distinguishing the source of reality from what is treated as its source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A name or display of power does not make something the source of reality. The verse undoes the belief that the powers people gather around can equal the One who made the heavens.
THE ROOT
עָשָׂה
ʿāsâ
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-ś-h
To do, make, or bring about.
The verse identifies the LORD through an act: the heavens are what the LORD has made. Its sound-play between אֱלֹהִים (elohim, gods) and אֱלִילִים (elilim, worthless idols) sets claimed divinity beside emptiness; the echo is a wordplay, not a claim that the words share a root.
ALSO GROWS
maʿăśeh: A work, deed, or thing made.
מַעֲשֶׂה
The heavens are a work that points back to the one who made them.
ʿōśeh: One who acts or makes.
עֹשֶׂה
The verse contrasts the maker, known by what the maker does, with idols that are named as gods.
THE PATTERN
What is made cannot rival the source who made it.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and bowed down and served the creation beside the one who created, who is praised for the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
Thus shall you say to them, The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth shall lose their way from the earth, and from under these heavens.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew verb עָשָׂה (ʿāsâ, made) to expose the test Psalm 96 compresses: the claimed gods did not make the heavens and the earth. Creation becomes a measure of reality, not a contest of names.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us