What Does 1 Chronicles 13:8 Mean?
And David and all Israel laughed before the face of God with all their strength, with singing, with harps, with psalteries, with timbrels, with cymbals, and with trumpets.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb translated “played” also carries the sense of rejoicing, so this is strength turned into delight made audible before God.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you as a picture of shared praise: the whole community brings its strength into sound before God. The verb for playing also carries laughter and rejoicing, making the music delight made audible, not only formal performance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse unsettles the belief that reverence must be quiet and restrained: here, voices, instruments, and strength all belong in what happens before God.
THE ROOT
מְשַׂחֲקִים
mesachaqim
GROWS FROM
שׂחק
To play, laugh, or rejoice.
“laughed” in this verse is mesachaqim. English “played” can sound like performance alone, but שׂחק (śaḥaq, play or rejoice) also carries laughter and delight. The root lets the music of this verse hold both force and joy at once.
ALSO GROWS
mischak: Play or game.
מִשְׂחָק
It shows that the verb belongs to the language of play, not only formal music-making.
sechoq: Laughter or merriment.
שְׂחוֹק
It opens the verse’s sound toward delight and rejoicing.
עֹז
oz
GROWS FROM
עזז
To be strong or prevail; עֹז names strength or might.
The strength here is not separated from the song: the people bring their full עֹז (ʿoz, strength) into the shared sound. Beside the playful verb, might becomes part of rejoicing rather than a force held apart from it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿazzuz: Mighty or strong.
עָזוּז
It carries the same sense of strength that עֹז brings into the music.
maʿoz: Stronghold or refuge.
מָעוֹז
It shows strength as something that can also be a place of shelter, widening the word beyond sheer force.
THE PATTERN
Praise takes shape as shared, embodied sound, with voices and instruments carrying delight before God.
Praise him with the hand-drum and the whirling; praise him with the strings and the pipe.In the middle of the night Paul and Silas prayed and sang praise to God, and the prisoners listened to them.Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and songs of breath, singing and plucking the strings in your heart to the Lord.THE THREAD
Then I am at his side, a craftsman; and I am his delight day by day, laughing before him at all times.The same root שׂחק (śaḥaq, play or rejoice) appears in “rejoicing always before him.” Proverbs gives the shared root to Wisdom’s delight, opening this verse’s communal music as joy expressed in God’s presence.
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