Psalm 100 opens with a two-word Hebrew title: mizmor l’todah. Everyone agrees on the first word — a psalm, a song. It is the second that sends translators in two directions.

The ESV, NASB, NIV, and most English Bibles render it “a psalm for giving thanks.” Straightforward, and probably what most singers assume it means. But the RSV reads it differently: “a psalm for the thank-offering.” So do several German Bibles — zum Dankopfer, for the thank offering. The gap between the two is not small. One points to a state of the heart; the other points to an animal on an altar.

The word is todah, and it can genuinely refer to either option. Across the Hebrew Bible it can mean thanksgiving in the general sense — the song, the grateful praise — but it is also the name of a specific sacrifice, the todah offering, a particular ceremony in the temple with its own rules in Leviticus. When the superscription attaches it to a psalm, it could be labeling the mood of the song or naming the liturgical event the song was written to accompany: the moment the offering was carried in and presented.

The Scriptura analysts lean toward the offering. The little Hebrew preposition attached to the word — the same one used elsewhere for “the memorial offering” and “the Sabbath day” — tends to mark a concrete occasion, and the psalm is drenched in temple language: enter his gates, his courts. Read that way, Psalm 100 is not a free-floating burst of gratitude but the soundtrack to a specific act of worship, sung while something was given.

Which leaves the translator with a quiet decision that shapes how a reader pictures the whole psalm. Is this a song about being thankful — or a song for the day you brought your thanks to the altar and let it burn? The Hebrew, economically, doesn’t specify. Most translations do not have the luxury of leaving it ambiguous.

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The Meaning of לְתוֹדָה in Psalm 100:1