What Does Psalm 150:3 Mean?
Praise him with the thrust of the ram's horn; praise him with the harp and the lyre.
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
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.THE KEY
The trumpet’s “sound” comes from a root that also means to drive or fasten, so praise arrives as a forceful blast before the strings carry it onward.
THE MEANING
Praise here has a blast and a resonance: the shofar sounds first, then the psaltery and harp. One act of acclaim takes several audible forms, carried through distinct instruments toward the same addressee.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Praise is only silent sentiment or must have one fixed sound; this verse gives it several audible forms.
THE ROOT
תֵּקַע
teqaʿ
GROWS FROM
תקע
t-q-ʿ
To thrust or drive in, to fasten; also to sound a horn.
“with the thrust of the ram's horn” in this verse is teqaʿ. The Hebrew word for the trumpet’s blast comes from a root that can also describe driving something firmly into place. Praise is given a forceful sound that enters the open air, then the strings answer within the same act.
ALSO GROWS
taqa: To thrust, drive in, or fasten.
תָּקַע
This root sense sits beneath the trumpet blast, joining the sound of praise with an action that makes a firm impression.
tekiah: A trumpet blast or sounding.
תְּקִיעָה
This noun names the horn’s blast, the sound that opens the verse’s sequence of instruments.
הַלְלוּהוּ
halleluhu
GROWS FROM
הלל
h-l-l
To praise, acclaim, or celebrate.
“Praise him” in this verse is halleluhu. The same praise command is repeated before both the trumpet and the strings. Hebrew keeps these different sounds within one act of acclaim; the instruments multiply its forms without changing its direction.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise or a song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
This related word shows praise taking shape as voiced song, as it does through the instruments here.
hallelu-yah: Praise Yah.
הַלְלוּיָהּ
It makes the same praise root audible in a familiar call directed toward God.
THE PATTERN
Praise becomes audible through distinct sounds and voices gathered into one address.
Shout to the LORD, all the earth. Burst open, ring out, and make music.And it came to be, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one voice heard in praising and in extending the hands to the LORD; and when they lifted their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of song, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; his faithful love is for the ages. Then the house was filled with a cloud, the house of the LORD.Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and songs of breath, singing and plucking the strings in your heart to the Lord.THE THREAD
Let them praise his nature in the whirling; let them make music to him with the hand-drum and the harp.The word translated “praise” shares the Hebrew halal root repeated in Psalm 150:3, and here it appears beside dance, timbrel, and harp. The root holds the act constant while its forms of expression widen.
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