What Does Psalm 150:4 Mean?
Praise him with the hand-drum and the whirling; praise him with the strings and the pipe.
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 timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.THE KEY
Praise is not contained in a sentence here: the verse gives it feet, rhythm, strings, and pipes.
THE MEANING
Praise takes shape through your body and through the sounds you make. The verse sets dance beside the timbrel, then strings beside the pipe, giving praise a range of physical forms.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that praise is only an inward thought or spoken formula dissolves here; this verse gives it movement and music.
THE ROOT
הַלְלוּהוּ
hallelu-hu
GROWS FROM
הלל
H-L-L
Praise, celebrate.
“Praise him” in this verse is hallelu-hu. English “praise” can sound like a category of speech, but this root also forms הַלְלוּיָהּ (hallelu-Yah), “praise Yah.” Here praise is expressed through dance and instruments: it is celebration made audible and embodied.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise; a song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
The same root gives praise a sung form, echoing this verse’s instruments.
hallelu-Yah: Praise Yah.
הַלְלוּיָהּ
This familiar call shares the verse’s root and makes praise an audible invocation.
THE PATTERN
Praise takes form through the whole person, becoming movement, song, and music.
Let them praise his nature in the whirling; let them make music to him with the hand-drum and the harp.And David whirled before the LORD with all his strength, and David was girded with a linen ephod.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 Hebrew word for “praise” in both verses comes from הלל (halal), the root of praise and celebration. Psalm 149:3 makes the same pairing explicit: dance, timbrel, and harp all carry that praise.
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