Nevin on the Meaning of “PSALMOS”
James Dodson
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MEANING OF “PSALMOS.”
Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says (1 Cor. xiv. 26), “How is it, then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.” Professor Wallace will have it that the word psalmos here signifies the gift of music, “and not the gift of song,” p. 26. His reason for this is far from being clear. “It is evident that the word cannot mean a psalm of David, for it occurs in an enumeration of gifts or mental endowments bestowed upon the members of the Church by the Spirit of God for edification.” We cannot see it. The apostle is, no doubt, in this chapter as a whole, treating of the use of spiritual gifts, whether miraculous or not, and finding fault with the manner in which those possessing them at Corinth employed them. But in this particular verse the enumeration is plainly not an enumeration of subjective gifts, but of the objective results of the exercise of these gifts. Is a doctrine a mental gift or endowment? Is a revelation? Is an interpretation? Even the word tongue, in this connection, evidently does not mean merely the ability to speak in a language which was not the speaker’s vernacular, but what was spoken in that language. Could the apostle be properly understood to blame the Corinthians for the simple possession of a gift, apart from all consideration of the manner of its exercise? Could the mere possession of gifts produce the confusion which it is so manifestly the apostle’s purpose in this chapter to condemn? The Professor tells us, moreover, that all the gifts alluded to “are referable to prophecy,” whereas the apostle in the chapter explicitly contrasts speaking with tongues and prophesying.
Even if it were admitted that the word psalmos in this passage meant music, or the gift of music, that would not quite serve the purpose, for there might be music without an instrument. Accordingly an attempt is made, with the help of Schleusner, to show that the word “might be translated in the text in 1 Cor. xiv., either music or a musical instrument.” Lexicographers, like some others eminent for their attainments in various departments of science, are enabled by their superior learning and industry to gather together a mass of materials from which deductions may be made; but, when it comes to that, those who can make no pretensions to their learning can easily see that their conclusions are sometimes strained, far-fetched, or manifestly absurd. Gesenius and Schleusner furnish examples in connection with this very word psalmos. The Hebrew word zimrah, the equivalent of psalmos, was employed to denote, sometimes a song, sometimes music, however produced; but never a musical instrument, although Schleusner appears to assume that it did. Another derivative noun from the same root was mizmor,
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a psalm or song, but this is found only in the titles of the Psalms. That, however, was not the primary meaning of zimrah. Its primary meaning, as derived from zamar, the signification of which we have already considered, was produce, that which was the result of plucking, pruning, or cutting. This is plainly its meaning in Gen. xliii. 11, where Jacob says to his sons, “Take of the produce (zimrath) of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds.” In our English Bible the word is rendered “best fruits,” but the insertion of the word best was wholly unwarranted. The Septuagint shows good sense by rendering simply, “Take of the fruits of the land.” Turning up now the word in Gesenius, we find the following under the second meaning given to it—“Meton. zimrath haarets song of the land, i.e., its most praised fruits or productions, Gen. xliii. 11.” This is to read the philosophy of the word backward, making primary and secondary exchange places. The English word production is analogous. A book, a poem, a song, is often called a production. Fancy some learned Hindoo writing an English Lexicon for the benefit of his countrymen, and accounting for the application of the term production to a statue in some particular instance, by telling them, in good Bengali or Gujrati, that it is so denominated because it is, as it were (metonymically), the song of the artist’s chisel! This is absurd enough, but Schleusner far exceeds it. The Professor tells us, with a reference to him, and without a syllable of qualification, that “the word translated ‘psalm’ sometimes signifies a musical instrument.” The dogmatic tone, however, is significantly abandoned (well it might be) in the words which immediately follow, giving us the quasi proof—“This seems to be its signification in Ps. lxxxi. 2, ‘Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp, with the psaltery.’ Also in Ps. xcviii. 5.” What is the seeming in the case? Why, that it is mentioned along with timbrel, harp, and psaltery. That is all. But let us hear the oracle itself. Schleusner has in his Lexicon, as the second meaning under the word psalmos, the following—“2) instrumentum musicum, quod pulsatur, cithara, i.q. psalterion,” with a reference to the two passages in the Psalms. In English—“a musical instrument, which is struck, a harp, the same as a psaltery.” So we are to believe not only that psalmos, in these instances, means a musical instrument, but that it was the same as the harp and the psaltery—and this because it happens to be mentioned in the same sentence with them, although in Ps. lxxxi. 2 it significantly has a verb to itself! Why did he not make it idem quod, the toph, as well as the kinnor and nebel? That was an instrument that was struck, it is mentioned in the same sentence, and the addition to the absurdity would have been infinitesimally small. If Professor Wallace can swallow all this, we marvel
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whether a second person in the wide world could be found possessed of such enormous powers of literary deglutition. One British workman says to another, at the close of their day’s labour, ‘Come over to my house this evening for an hour or two. Bring a good song, your violin, and your son with his concertina.’ Would the man thus addressed understand the English word song to be intended to signify a musical instrument?—would he understand that son, too, means a musical instrument?—and, for a like reason, would he take song, violin, son, and concertina all to mean one and the same instrument? Ah, but this workman never passed through a college curriculum, has no acquaintance with Greek and Hebrew, knows only his mother tongue, and has only his mother wit to guide him in the use of it. Has he lost much in consequence? Nothing, if we must judge by this specimen from the learned Schleusner.
The Professor (or Schleusner) “seems” somewhat nearer his point in his references to Job, xxi. 12, and xxx. 31. In the first of these the Hebrew phrase kol ugab, ‘the voice (or sound) of the pipe,’ is rendered in the Septuagint phōnē psalmou, ‘the voice (or sound) of music.’ In the second, ugabi, ‘my pipe,’ is rendered psalmos mou, ‘my music,’ which is strictly and properly the idea, for in the original the instrument is put by a figure of speech for the sounds produced from it. But these furnish no proof that psalmos was ever regarded as the exact equivalent for ugab. We have already seen how, in Gen. iv. 21, this word is rendered in the Septuagint by kithara, an instrument of a different class. In Ps. cl. 4 it is rendered organon. In these places in Job—the only other where it occurs—it is rendered as we have seen. It must be remembered that the Septuagint is only a translation, and we have here only another proof that its authors were in the habit of using a free and easy method, translating ad sensum—sometimes not even coming up to that, for some of their renderings are unintelligible or nonsensical. As an example, in connection with their use of this very word psalmos, let the educated reader turn to 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, and he will find the Hebrew zemiroth, psalmist, as applied to David, actually rendered by the plural psalmoi, psalms. Seemingly in utter ignorance of the Hebrew verb for said or uttered, in the same verse, they have thrown in for it at random the adjective pistos, faithful, with other grave errors that we need not wait to particularize. Altogether the verse is a specimen of blundering incompetency which it would be hard to match—outside the pages of the Septuagint. It would be simply impossible to present a literal translation of it into sensible English.
The truth is, psalmos was sometimes employed in the ancient classics, in accordance with its derivation, to signify a tone, tune, melody, or music. It was no doubt intended to convey this idea in
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some places in the Septuagint, although much oftener employed in the sense of psalm. But never, in a single instance, since Greek was a language, was it used to signify a musical instrument. In the New Testament it has a definite and easily ascertained meaning. There it occurs only seven times altogether, twice in the singular and five times in the plural.* In one of these (Lu. xxiv. 44) it is used, in conjunction with “the Law” and “the Prophets,” to designate the third division of the Old Testament scriptures, according to the Jewish method of referring to them—the Hagiographa. In all the rest the term has reference to the Book of Psalms. 1 Cor. xiv. 26 is no exception. It is not necessary to suppose that the psalm spoken of by the apostle there was ever sung. If one got up in a worshipping assembly, and read aloud or recited a psalm of David, while another was speaking, there would be that confusion which the apostle condemned. Singing and getting some to join in the singing would make no very material difference in that respect, nor would it require the noise of a musical instrument to make the confusion much worse. All the gifts the apostle alludes to in the chapter were not necessarily of a miraculous kind. It did not require a miraculous gift, for instance, to state and expound a doctrine, or to make an interpretation. One, it is true, might do these things under a special impulse of the Spirit, but so might he be influenced to expound or give out to be sung one of David’s psalms. And, since the Spirit was the author of these, it seems far more probable to us that such would be the case, than that men were gifted to compose new songs in the apostles’ days—an operation of the Spirit which was never made the subject of promise, and of which or the results we have not a trace. Most expositors, indeed, assume that the psalm spoken of in the passage was an extemporized effusion, whether inspired or otherwise, but for this not a scintilla of real reason can be given—it is merely a gratuitous and groundless conjecture.
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* The seven are—Ac. xiii. 33: 1 Cor. xiv. 26: Luke xx. 42, and xxiv. 44: Ac. i. 20: Eph. v. 19: Col. iii. 16.