Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.
Parallel translations
- WEB Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised! His greatness is unsearchable.
- BSB Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable.
- NKJV Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable.
- NASB Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable.
- NLT Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! No one can measure his greatness.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God is great and worthy of great praise, and His greatness cannot be fully searched out. Our worship can never exhaust how worthy He is.
Overview
David declares both the magnitude of God's greatness and its incomprehensibility; the more we know Him, the more remains beyond us. This 'unsearchable' greatness humbles human pride and fuels endless adoration. Paul echoes the wonder of God's unsearchable riches now revealed in Christ (Romans 11:33; Ephesians 3:8).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Ps 147:5Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.
- Job 5:9Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number:
- Rom 11:33O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
- Isa 40:28Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
- Job 9:10Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.
- Ps 139:6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
- Ps 48:1Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.
- Ps 96:4For the LORD is great, and greatly to be praised: he is to be feared above all gods.
- Rev 15:3And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.
- Job 11:7–9Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
- Job 26:14Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 145:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.