Psalms 150
What Happens in This Chapter
This short psalm closes the book of Psalms with a call to praise God. It names where to praise him, why to praise him, and which instruments to use, listing horn, harp, lyre, tambourine, strings, flute, and two kinds of cymbals, along with dancing. It ends by calling on everything that breathes to join in.
Praise the LORD! Praise God in his holy house. Praise him in the wide sky above, where his power is shown.
1Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.
"Praise ye the LORD" translates the single Hebrew word *halelu-yah* (a plural command, "praise Yah," *Yah* being the short form of the divine name. It is the source of the English word "hallelujah," and it opens and closes this psalm. Where the text prints LORD in capitals it stands for that personal name of God, which Hebrew writes with four consonants (YHWH) and which readers did not pronounce aloud. "Sanctuary" is the holy place) the temple in Jerusalem, or the heavenly counterpart of it. "Firmament" is the King James word for the vault or dome of the sky, pictured in the Hebrew as a solid expanse spread over the earth; "the firmament of his power" means either the sky as the place where his power resides or the sky as the display of it.
2Praise him for the powerful things he has done. Praise him because he is great beyond measure.
2Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.
3Praise him with the blast of the horn. Praise him with the harp and the lyre.
3Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.
The "trumpet" here is the *shofar*, a ram's horn, blown as a signal at festivals, battles and coronations rather than played for melody. The "psaltery" (*nebel*) and "harp" (*kinnor*) are two different stringed instruments, the *kinnor* a small lyre held in the arms, the *nebel* a larger, deeper-sounding instrument. Their exact construction is not known.
4Praise him with the tambourine and with dancing. Praise him with stringed instruments and with the flute.
4Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
A "timbrel" is a hand drum, a hoop with a skin stretched over it, like a tambourine; in the Hebrew Bible it is usually played by women leading a procession of song and dance. "Organs" does not mean a church organ, which did not exist; the King James translators used the word for a simple pipe or flute, and the Hebrew term (*ugab*) probably refers to a wind instrument of that kind.
5Praise him with clashing cymbals. Praise him with cymbals that ring out loud.
5Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
The Hebrew names two kinds of cymbal in the two lines, and the difference is one of sound rather than of type, roughly "cymbals of hearing" and "cymbals of loud noise," perhaps smaller clashing cymbals and larger resounding ones.
6Let every living thing that breathes praise the LORD. Praise the LORD!
6Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.
"Every thing that hath breath" renders a Hebrew phrase (*kol ha-neshamah*) covering everything that draws breath, living creatures generally, not human beings only. This is the last verse of the last psalm, and the closing "Praise ye the LORD" ends not only this psalm but the whole book of Psalms.
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