Psalms 147:5 Meaning and Explanation
“Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.”
King James Version (KJV)
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Read Full Chapter →Statements about God's greatness can float free of anything we actually care about. Psalm 147 refuses to let this one drift. It arrives one line after God is described healing broken hearts and one line before he is described lifting up the meek, which means the immeasurable understanding celebrated here is turned toward people who are hurting.
A three-part acclamation at the center of a praise psalm: the Lord is great in himself, great in power, and beyond counting in understanding, so nothing escapes his knowledge or his ability to help.
The Context of Psalms 147:5
Psalm 147 is one of the closing Hallelujah psalms, opening and ending with a call to praise the LORD. Many readers connect it with the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the exile, since verse 2 speaks of building up the city and gathering the outcasts of Israel. The psalm alternates between the very large and the very small: stars named individually in verse 4, broken hearts bound up in verse 3, rain and grass and young ravens in verses 8 and 9, snow and ice and thawing wind in verses 16 through 18. Verse 5 stands as the summarizing acclamation that holds those scales together.
What Does Psalms 147:5 Mean?
Three clauses build to a single point. The words great is our Lord place the possessive early: this greatness belongs to a God the congregation already knows by covenant. The phrase of great power adds capacity, the strength to accomplish whatever he intends. His understanding is infinite renders a line that says literally there is no number to his understanding, which lands with force right after verse 4, where God counts the stars and calls each one by name. Counting is precisely what he does to the heavens, and no one can perform that operation on him. The verse measures God by the single thing that refuses to be measured.
The arrangement of the psalm carries an argument. A God who assigns names to stars is never too occupied to bind up a wound, and a God who tracks every broken heart is fully able to run the weather. Israel learned this pairing across its Scriptures, from a Creator who stretches out the heavens and also visits a childless woman, to prophets who set the measuring of the sea beside the carrying of lambs. Verse 5 is the hinge that keeps both true at once. Verse 6 draws the practical consequence immediately, since lifting up the meek and casting down the wicked requires knowledge that misses nothing and strength that finishes what it starts.
The Gospels put the psalm's two scales inside one person. Jesus tells a crowd that the hairs of their heads are numbered and that no sparrow falls unnoticed, which is this psalm's logic in miniature: the God who counts is the God who cares. He also stills a storm and multiplies bread, exercising the great power the psalm celebrates. Paul, tracing the same wonder, closes a long argument by confessing that God's judgments lie past finding out. The acclamation of verse 5 therefore holds steady in the New Testament, where greatness, power, and unsearchable understanding are seen at work in mercy toward particular named people.
Psalms 147:5 in the Original Language
mispar (מִסְפָּר), 'infinite' -- the Hebrew reads literally that there is no number to his understanding. Mispar means a count or a tally, so the line denies that God's understanding can ever be totalled. The KJV word infinite captures the sense of a quantity no one reaches the end of.
Bible Verses Related to Psalms 147:5
“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.”
- Isaiah 40:26
“Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”
- Psalm 145:3
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
- Romans 11:33
“But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”
- Matthew 10:30
Where Psalms 147:5 Echoes in Scripture
Isaiah 40:28 sounds the same note to a discouraged people, asking whether they have not heard that the everlasting God does not faint or grow weary and that his understanding is unsearchable. The situations match closely, since both texts address a community suspecting its case has slipped past God's notice. Isaiah then turns the truth into endurance, promising renewed strength to those who wait, which shows how a statement about God's mind becomes strength in the legs of tired people.
How to Apply Psalms 147:5 Today
When a situation feels too tangled to explain, this line offers something steadying: the Lord's understanding has no bottom, so nothing about our circumstances needs simplifying before we bring it to him. Praise can begin right there, in the specific relief of being fully known. The verse also reorders our sense of scale. Concerns we judge too small to mention belong to the God who names stars, and problems we judge too large belong to the God of great power. Both kinds can go into the same prayer tonight, in the same sentence.
Reflection & Prayer
What have we quietly decided God is too busy or too great to attend to? A short prayer: Lord, you count the stars and you know my name. Nothing in my life is beneath your notice or beyond your strength. Teach me to bring you the parts I have been managing alone, and let me praise you tonight for understanding I will never finish measuring.