Psalms 118:14 Meaning and Explanation
“The LORD is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.”
King James Version (KJV)
This study note uses an AI-assisted editorial workflow with source, duplication, and quality checks. See how verse explanations are prepared.
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Some sentences in Scripture get quoted so often that their edges wear smooth. This one is a direct echo of the song at the Red Sea, placed on the lips of a worshipper generations later who has just survived his own crisis. Learning why he reached for those particular words shows us how faith borrows language from the past to describe the present.
In the middle of a thanksgiving liturgy the singer names three things at once: the LORD supplies the power he lacked, the music he sings, and the rescue he has actually received.
The Context of Psalms 118:14
Psalm 118 closes the group of psalms sung at Israel's great festivals. It opens and ends with the same refrain about the LORD's enduring mercy, and its middle recounts a deliverance: the singer surrounded by nations, thrust at hard, helped by the LORD. Verse 14 arrives right after that account of assault, as the first full confession of praise. What follows is a procession toward the temple, with shouts in the tents of the righteous, a request that the gates of righteousness be opened, and sacrifice bound to the horns of the altar.
What Does Psalms 118:14 Mean?
Three claims sit in one short line. 'My strength' answers the previous verse, where an enemy thrust hard enough to make the singer fall. 'My song' says the same LORD supplies the words for celebrating what he did, so the rescue and the music share a source. Then the tense shifts: 'is become my salvation'. Something has happened. A confession once held in hope has moved into experience, and the singer can now speak of salvation as a possession with a date on it. The three claims stack from need, to worship, to accomplished fact, and each one is personal, marked by that repeated 'my'.
These exact words first appear in Exodus 15:2, sung on the far shore after Israel walked out of Egypt through the sea, and they appear again in Isaiah 12:2 as a promise about a future rescue. Psalm 118 sets them in the mouth of one person hemmed in by nations. The pattern matters. Israel's public deliverance became a template for private ones, and the private ones were sung back into the congregation. Verse 15 immediately moves the rejoicing into the tents of the righteous. One man's testimony turns into a nation's liturgy, which then equips the next person in trouble with words to use.
Later in this same psalm the singer speaks of a stone the builders refused becoming the head of the corner, and of one who comes in the name of the LORD. Jesus applied the first line to himself at the end of his ministry, and the crowds shouted the second as he entered Jerusalem. That places verse 14 in company we can trace. The salvation the psalmist had received in his own lifetime pointed on to a larger rescue by the same hand. The hymn sung at the close of the last supper was very likely this psalm, which would mean the disciples were singing these words about the man seated at the table with them.
Psalms 118:14 in the Original Language
zimrath (זִמְרָת), 'song' -- praise set to music, the melody raised about someone. Naming the LORD himself as the singer's song says the music has no subject other than what God has done.
Bible Verses Related to Psalms 118:14
“The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”
- Exodus 15:2
“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.”
- Isaiah 12:2
“I will praise thee: for thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation.”
- Psalm 118:21
“The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.”
- Psalm 28:7
Where Psalms 118:14 Echoes in Scripture
Revelation 15:3 describes those who have come through the last conflict singing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. The song of Moses is the one at the sea, where this line about strength, song, and salvation was first raised. Scripture thus opens and closes its account of rescue with the same music. A worshipper in Psalm 118 borrowed it in the middle, which suggests the words are meant to be handed forward from one delivered people to the next.
How to Apply Psalms 118:14 Today
Naming God as our strength has a practical test: what do we reach for first when the pressure rises? The psalm suggests borrowing words already proven. Learning a few lines of Scripture or an old hymn by heart gives us something to say when our own words run out. The second half of the verse suggests keeping a running account of deliverances already received, since help we have actually been given is sturdier ground than help we merely anticipate. Singing helps here in a way explaining does not; melody carries truth into places argument cannot reach.
Reflection & Prayer
Where are we currently drawing our strength, and what would it take to sing about it? We might take one rescue from the past year and set it to a tune already familiar to us. A prayer: Lord, be my strength where I have none of my own, and give me a song for what you have already done. Teach me to remember out loud. Amen.