physically · verb, hiphil imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
LORD
לַיהוָ֣הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
harp
בְּכִנּ֑וֹרbe.khi.Nor
H3658
a harp · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
sing
זַמְּרוּza.me.ru-
H2167
play upon it · verb, piel imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
psaltery
בְּנֵ֥בֶלbe.Ne.vel
H5035
a skin-bag for liquids (from collapsing when empty) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
strings
עָ֝שׂ֗וֹרa.Sor
H6218
ten · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 150:3-6 Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.
Psalms 98:4-5 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
Psalms 144:9 I will sing a new song unto thee, O God: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee.
Exodus 15:20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with danc…
2 Samuel 6:5 And David and all the house of Israel played before the LORD on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries…
1 Chronicles 15:16 And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of musick, psalteries and harps and…
1 Chronicles 15:28 Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD with shouting, and with sound of the cornet, and with trumpets, and with cymb…
1 Chronicles 25:3 Of Jeduthun: the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah, and Zeri, and Jeshaiah, Hashabiah, and Mattithiah, six, under the hands of their father Jeduthu…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 33:1-11
Four things the psalmist expresses in these verses:
I. The great desire he had that God might be praised. He did not think he did it so well himself, but that he wished others also might be employed in this work; the more the better, in this concert: it is the more like heaven. 1. Holy joy is the heart and soul of praise, and that is here pressed upon all good people (Psa 33:1): Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous; so the foregoing psalm concluded and so this begins; for all our religious exercises should both begin and end with a holy complacency and triumph in God as the best of being and best of friends. 2. Thankful praise is the breath and language of holy joy; and that also is here requi…
Praise the Lord with harp,.... An instrument David was well skilled in the use of, the inventor of which was Jubal, Genesis 4:21;
sing unto, him with the psaltery; the name of this instrument is in the Hebrew language "nebel": the account which Josephus (w) gives of this, and of the former, is,
"the harp is extended with ten strings, and is plucked with a quill; the "nabla", or psaltery, has twelve sounds, and is played upon with the fingers;''
some make this and the next to be the same:
and an instrument of ten strings; and read them together thus, "with the psaltery of ten strings": and so the Targum, Septuagint, and other versions (x): but it seems from Josephus that it was not a stri…
Psalm 33:1-4
1. Rejoice in Jehovah, ye righteous; praise is comely [670] for the upright. 2. Praise Jehovah upon the harp; sing unto him upon the viol, and an instrument of ten strings. 3. Sing a new song to him; sing loudly with joyfulness: 4. For the word of Jehovah is right; and all his works are in faithfulness. [671]
1. Rejoice in Jehovah, ye righteous. Here the inspired writer addresses believers or the righteous by name, because they alone are capable of proclaiming the glory of God. Unbelievers, who have never tasted his goodness, cannot praise him from the heart, and God has no pleasure in his name being pronounced by their unholy tongues. But the context shows more distinctly why…
The Church Fathers
The harp and the lute are within us, or rather, we ourselves are the instruments when in their likeness we sing by the Lord's grace through the quality of our actions.
"Praise the Lord with harp:" praise the Lord, presenting unto Him your bodies a living sacrifice. [Romans 12:1] "Sing unto Him with the psaltery for ten strings" [Psalm 33:2]: let your members be servants to the love of God, and of your neighbour, in which are kept both the three and the seven commandments.
It is necessary to praise the Lord on the harp; that is, to render harmoniously the actions of the body. Since, indeed, we sinned in the body, "when we yielded our members as slaves of sin, to lawlessness," let us give praise with our body, using the same instrument for the destruction of sin. Have you reviled? Bless. Have you defrauded? Make restitution. Have you been intoxicated? Fast. Have you made false pretensions? Be humble. Have you been envious? Console. Have you murdered? Bear witness, or afflict your body with the equivalent of martyrdom through confession. And then, after confession you are worthy to play for God on the ten-stringed psaltery. For it is necessary, first, to correct the actions of our body, so that we perform them harmoniously with the divine Word and thus mount up to the contemplation of things intellectual.… One, therefore, who observes all the precepts and makes, as it were, harmony and symphony from them, this one, I say, plays for God an a ten-stringed psaltery.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Harp — (Heb. kinnor), the national instrument of the Hebrews. It was invented by Jubal (Gen. 4:21). Some think the word kinnor denotes the whole class of stringed instruments. It was used as an…
Word, The — (Gr. Logos), one of the titles of our Lord, found only in the writings of John (John 1:1-14; 1 John 1:1; Rev. 19:13). As such, Christ is the revealer of God. His office is to make God known. “No man…
Harp · Ten strings — Ten strings
Music · Instruments of: Psaltery — Instruments of: Psaltery
Psaltery · Used in religious services — Used in religious services
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The call contained in this hexastich is addressed to the righteous and upright, who earnestly seek to live a godly and God-pleasing life, and the sole determining rule of whose conduct is the will and good pleasure of God. These alone know God, whose true nature finds in them a clear mirror; so on their part they are joyfully to confess what they possess in Him. For it is their duty, and at the same time their honour, to praise him, and make their boast in Him. נאוה is the feminine of the adjective נאוה (formed out of נאוי), as in Psa 147:1, cf. Pro 19:10. On כּנּור (lxx κιθάρα, κινύρα) and נבל (lxx ψαλτήριον, νάβλα, ναῦλα, etc.) vid., Introduction @a7II. נבל is the name given to the ha…
Ps 33 This hymn of creation (see also Pss 8, 19, 104, 145) might be a continuation of Ps 32. It exhorts readers to praise God (33:1-3), to recognize the power of his word in creation (33:4-7), and to fear the Creator (33:8-11). It offers hope to forgiven sinners (Ps 32) that they can live a new life in the fear of the Lord and under divine protection.
33:1-3 The psalmist exhorts the godly to praise the Lord with melodies, with a new song, and with skillfully-played music.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 33:2
Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.
Praise the Lord with harp. Men need all the help they can get to stir them up to praise. This is the lesson to be gathered from the use of musical instruments under the old dispensation. Israel was at school, and used childish things to help her to learn; but in these days, when Jesus gives us spiritual manhood, we can make melody without strings and pipes. We who do not believe these things to be expedient in worship, lest they should mar its simplicity, do not affirm them to be unlawful, and if any George Herbert or Martin Luther can worship God better by the aid of well tunes instruments, who sha…
