What Does Psalm 98:8 Mean?
Let the rivers clap their palms; let the mountains ring out together.
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
Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful togetherTHE KEY
The rivers do not merely witness the LORD’s arrival; they clap for it, and the hills answer in one song.
THE MEANING
The rivers strike their hands in a pictured act of celebration, and the hills ring out together as the LORD comes to judge the world in righteousness (v. 9). Creation has a voice in this scene: moving water keeps time, and the land joins the song.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that only human beings can answer God: here, rivers and hills join the song themselves.
THE ROOT
יִמְחֲאוּ
yimḥaʾu
GROWS FROM
מחא
m-ḥ-ʾ
To strike or clap with the hand.
“clap their palms” in this verse is yimḥaʾu. This is a physical gesture, not just a description of cheerful water. Isaiah uses the same rare verb for trees clapping their hands, giving rivers and trees a shared way to answer.
ALSO GROWS
māḥāʾ: To clap or strike with the hand.
מָחָא
This is the verb’s base form behind the rivers’ gesture.
yimḥaʾu kaf: They clap their hands.
יִמְחֲאוּ כַּף
Isaiah 55:12 uses this same verb for the trees of the field, extending the gesture across creation.
יְרַנֵּנוּ
yerannenu
GROWS FROM
רנן
r-n-n
To ring out, shout, or sing aloud.
“ring out together” in this verse is yerannenu. The hills’ joy is vocal: the Hebrew verb gives it sound. What English can leave as an inward feeling becomes a ringing song shared by the landscape.
ALSO GROWS
rinnah: A ringing shout or song of joy.
רִנָּה
The related noun makes clear that this family of words carries joy as an audible cry.
yerannenu: They sing or shout aloud.
יְרַנְּנוּ
Psalm 96:12 uses this same verb for the trees of the forest singing for joy, again giving creation a voice.
THE PATTERN
Creation is pictured voicing its response to the LORD’s acts, with its own sounds and song.
Ring out, O heavens, for the LORD has made it. Shout, O lower parts of the earth. Burst into song, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it, for the LORD has bought back Jacob, and in Israel he adorns himself.And he answered and said, "I tell you, if these should hold their tongues, the stones will cry out."THE THREAD
For you shall go out in joy, and be carried forth in wholeness. The mountains and the hills shall burst into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their palms.Isaiah 55:12 uses the same Hebrew verb מָחָא (māḥāʾ), “to clap,” for the trees of the field. It also gives mountains and hills a song, opening Psalm 98’s image into a chorus shared across creation.
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