Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised! His greatness is unsearchable.
Parallel translations
- KJV Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and 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 mighty in power. His understanding is infinite.
- Job 5:9who does great things that can’t be fathomed, marvelous things without number;
- Rom 11:33Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!
- Isa 40:28Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, The Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
- Job 9:10He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
- Ps 139:6This knowledge is beyond me. It’s lofty. I can’t attain it.
- Ps 48:1A Song. A Psalm by the sons of Korah. Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God, in his holy mountain.
- Ps 96:4For great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised! He is to be feared above all gods.
- Rev 15:3They sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God, the Almighty! Righteous and true are your ways, you King of the nations.
- Job 11:7–9“Can you fathom the mystery of God? Or can you probe the limits of the Almighty?
- Job 26:14Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. How small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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.