CHAPTER IX.
Psallo in the Septuagint with the Bearing of the Revised Version on the Question.

It is the purpose in this chapter to examine the argument based on the Septuagint use of psallo, and to note the bearing of the Revised Version on the issue. We choose to consider the latter first in order.

It will be readily admitted by all candid and well-informed persons that, in the British and American Revision of the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures, is represented the world's ripest scholarship. Many persons, otherwise intelligent and well informed, are not aware of the magnitude of the task which was undertaken by these masters of language and literature, and they are, therefore, without any adequate conception or just appreciation of the character and degree of learning necessary for the work.

As the scholarship represented in this immense work has an indirect but vital and important bearing upon the leading question discussed in this volume, I invite the reader's attention to some interesting facts connected with it before considering the argument based on the Septuagint use of psallo.

Even the half dozen men with whom the great enterprise originated about forty years ago, together with the thirty-nine scholars invited by the Convocation of Canterbury to assist in the work, constituted a company of men whose scholarship and varied learning were sufficient to command the respect and admiration of the literary world; but when this number was subsequently augmented by another list of names with equally brilliant attainments, which brought the whole number of Revisers to sixty-seven on the British side, and which has since been known as the English Company of Revisers, there was a body of men which, for broad and varied learning in the field of Biblical research, was perhaps seldom ever equalled and never surpassed.

But this is not all. Soon after the work of forming the English Company was well under way, its promoters decided to invite the coöperation of certain eminent American scholars; and, accordingly, there were appointed in this country two Companies corresponding to the two English Companies,--one for the Old Testament and the other for the New, the late William Henry Green, of Princeton, Chairman of the former, and the late Theodore D. Woolsey, Ex-President of Yale University, Chairman of the latter. In all, there were, on the British side, thirty-seven members of the Old Testament Company, and thirty of the New Testament Company; and on the American side, fifteen in the Old Testament Company, and nineteen in the New Testament [87] Company, making a grand total, including all on both sides of the Atlantic, of one hundred and one scholars. Vacancies caused by death or resignation during the fourteen years spent on the work were filled by the appointment of other eminent scholars of like attainments.

Now, the bearing of the course pursued in the Revision by this distinguished array of scholars on the issue now before us, is significant and far-reaching. Without a single exception, they all belonged to religious bodies which use instrumental music in the worship, and if they could consistently have given the practice any support in their revision of the old version, or in making a new translation of any particular passages, they would most assuredly have done so. Popular sentiment and popular practice were both in favor of it; and if the word psallo bore any meaning in New Testament times favorable to the practice, we may rest assured that they would have taken advantage of the fact.

On precisely the same principle, all the King James Translators and the great majority of the Revisers, belonging to religious bodies which practice pouring and sprinkling for baptism, would in both cases have translated the term baptizo in a way to support their practice if their scholarship had permitted them to do so. They knew that the word had no such meaning; and hence, as they could not correctly translate it so as to support their practice, they would not translate it so as to condemn it, and [88] so they decided merely to Anglicize it, and did not translate it at all.

But the case concerning the meaning of psallo is even stronger than that concerning the meaning of baptizo. Not simply a majority of the religious bodies represented by the Revisers, but all of them use instrumental music in the worship. Hence, so far as theological reasons were concerned, everything was in favor of rendering psallo so as to uphold the practice, and no conceivable consideration would have kept them from doing so, if it could have been done with any show of consistency. But, after spending fourteen years of arduous labor on the Old and New Testaments before bringing their task to completion, what is their verdict? What do these distinguished scholars say is the meaning of psallo in the New Testament? Did they venture to say that the word, in any instance, means to play an instrument of music? They did not. In not a solitary instance of the use of this word by any writer of the New Testament do they tell us it has such a meaning. Why is this? Why did they not tell us, in substance, that it means "to play a stringed instrument with the fingers?" For the support of such a rendering, they could have appealed to the great lexicon of Liddell and Scott--the very highest extant authority in classic Greek--for they specifically give this, in so many words, as one of the meanings of the term.^[7] Can any thoughtful person fail to see [89] that, in such a case, with every other consideration overwhelmingly in favor of such a rendering, nothing would ever have kept the Revisers from it except their unquestioned knowledge of the meaning of psallo in the New Testament period? No honest and intelligent witness will testify in court against his own interests and desires, except by the inexorable demands of truth and consistency.

Now, so far were these scholars from translating the word as meaning to play an instrument, or even by any other term directly or indirectly favoring such a meaning, they translate it, as the King James Translators had done, in all of its five occurrences, with one exception, by the verb to sing. The one exception is Eph. 5: 19 where they translate it, "making melody," but the context of the passage, as the Revisers rightly recognize, defines the "melody" to be "in" or "with the heart," which is simply a figurative expression for singing. This passage furnishes a fine illustration of the antithesis between the original classic use of psallo, and the use which it had come to have before the opening of the New Testament period. The Greek participial clause: "ψαλλοντες εν τη καρδια 'υμων τω Κυριω," correctly rendered in the Revised Version, "making melody with your heart to the Lord," institutes a vivid contrast and antithesis between the melody made during the classic period by literally striking the chords of a musical instrument, and that made during the later period by figuratively striking the chords of the human [90] heart. In the language of the lamented Robert Milligan, perhaps the equal in scholarship of any man of his day and country: "The antithesis here is certainly very marked, and seems to be intentional and significant."--Scheme of Redemption, p. 386.

We conclude that, so far as the work of the Revisers is concerned, the English-speaking world, with the Revised New Testament as their guide, would never once think of instrumental music in the worship of a church of Christ.

But we are here informed that, notwithstanding the conclusion to which we are led by the brilliant array of scholarship represented by the Canterbury Revisers, we are, nevertheless, confronted with the fact that the Septuagint--the Greek version of the Old Testament made at Alexandria--which represents another array of scholarship, uses the term psallo as a translation of certain Hebrew words which all scholars admit mean to play an instrument of music, and that, therefore, psallo must mean the same thing. We shall now undertake to expose the fallacy which lurks in this argument, and to show that those who make it not only gain nothing, but lose much, when they attempt to trace psallo by the circuitous route that leads through the Greek of the Septuagint back to the original Hebrew.

We introduce this phase of the subject with a quotation from Professor Clinton Lockhart, of Christian University. Answering the question, "Can you tell me the passages in the Septuagint where psallo occurs, [91] and the Hebrew of which it is a translation, and the definition of the same?" he makes the following reply:

In the following passages psallo is a translation of zamar, which means to play an instrument or to sing with instrumental accompaniment: Jud. 5: 3; 2 Sam. 22: 50; Psa. 7: 17; 9: 2, 11; 18: 49; 21: 13; 27: 6; 30: 4, 12; 33: 2; 47: 6 (four times), 7; 57: 8, 9; 59: 17; 61: 8; 66: 2, 4 (twice); 68: 4, 32; 71: 22, 23 (tells how); 75: 9; 98: 4, 5; 101: 1; 104: 33; 108: 1, 2; 105: 2; 135: 3; 138: 1; 144: 9; 146: 2; 147: 7; 149: 3; 92: 1. To play is a translation of nagan, which means to strike strings, to play on an instrument, but does not mean to sing. (1 Sam. 16: 16, 17, 23; 19: 9; 2 Ki. 3: 15; Psa. 33: 3--second verb.)

Then, commenting on certain Hebrew words, he further says:

Shir everywhere means simply to sing, to chant. The noun from shir and shirah means a song, a hymn. The finite verb meaning simply to sing is nowhere translated psallo, but the participle once (Psa. 68: 25) is so translated. Zamar, found only in the piel form, zimmēr, means to touch the chords of an instrument, to play, to sing with an instrument, and, when done in honor of some person, to celebrate.--Stark-Warlick Debate, p. 98.

Thus, he tells us that zamar means "to sing with instrumental accompaniment," and that "to play is a translation of nagan, which means to strike strings, to play on an instrument, but does not mean to sing," [92] and we accept both of these statements as correct. He then says: "Shir everywhere means simply to sing, to chant," and we accept this statement also as correct. Hence, according to these statements and admissions, we have the fact that nagan always means to play an instrument, but never means to sing; that zamar means to sing, though it also means to sing with instrumental accompaniment; and that shir always means simply to sing, and never means to play an instrument.

We now state, as recognized by Professor Lockhart, that psallo appears in the Septuagint as a translation of all of these words--nagan, zamar, and shir: once for shir; a few times for nagan; and, as Thayer's lexicon says, "much oftener for zamar."

It is, therefore, pertinent to ask, if nagan always means to play on an instrument, and never means to sing, and zamar, though meaning to sing with instrumental accompaniment, yet means also simply to sing or to sing praises--being rendered in this last sense almost uniformly in the Revised Version--and shir means nothing but to sing, how can psallo stand in the Septuagint as the representative of all these words? The answer is ready at hand. It is simply because of the fact, abundantly shown elsewhere in this work, that psallo, for several centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, was undergoing a process of change in meaning; and the Septuagint version, which was made about two hundred years before Christ, was therefore made while this process [93] was going on. We have already seen, from the standard Greek lexicons, that all the stages of meaning through which the word passed are distinctly recognized and put down by the authors of these lexicons. Summed up by Leonard F. Bittle, as quoted elsewhere in this work, they are as follows:

In its primary sense, psallo had no reference to music at all, but meant merely to touch or twitch or pull; then it was used to denote the drawing of the bowstring in shooting arrows; afterwards it was restricted to making music on a harp by touching its strings; then it was applied to singing with the accompaniment of harp-music; finally it was used to denote singing psalms without any instrument save the organs of speech. In this last and latest sense it is used exclusively in the New Testament.

The reader will please note carefully, as well stated in the foregoing extract, the different stages of meaning which the word had at different times.

Now, while it is a fact that, out of the fifteen occurrences of nagan in the Hebrew Bible, psallo is given as its representative in the Septuagint in about ten of them, it is also a fact that, out of the forty-seven occurrences of zamar, psallo is given as its representative in the great majority of them, and one time it is given as the representative of shir, which never means anything but to sing. Psallo had not lost all of its classical meaning when the Septuagint was made, and this fact will account for its use a few times to represent nagan; but it is also a fact [94] that the particular Hebrew verb (zamar), for which psallo is used oftener in the Septuagint than for any other Hebrew word, not only means to sing without any instrumental accompaniment at all, but this meaning was so well established that frequently when it was used in connection with instrumental accompaniment a separate word was used to denote the instrument both in the Hebrew Bible and in the Septuagint. This is true in Psa. 33: 2; 98: 5; 147: 7; 149: 3.

The author freely concedes that zamar meant to play an instrument of music, just as psallo in classic Greek meant the same thing; but, that its prevailing idea in the Hebrew Bible is "to sing" or "to sing praises," is abundantly recognized in the lexicons as well as in the Revised Version. We here note what the Hebrew lexicons say of this word:

1. Fuerst's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon defines it thus:

1. To buzz, to hum, i. e. to sing. 2. Figuratively, to sing with the accompaniment of an instrument, i. e. to play; then to praise, to celebrate, to dance, to leap, as far as song was the main thought in the act. Piel 1. to sing, used of the voice, along with shir, Psa. 27: 6; 57: 8; 105: 2 and ranan Psa. 98: 4 with which it is identical; Septuagint humnein. Specifically to celebrate, i. e. to glorify one in song, to praise, to extol, particularly God. 2. to play, with Be^[8] of the instrument, as Psa. 33: 2; 98: 5; 149: 3, properly to accompany the song with instruments, as was [95] customary in ancient times; Septuagint psallein (properly to finger, to touch).

2. Gesenius' Hebrew and English Lexicon says:

To touch or strike the chords of an instrument, to play, Greek psallein; and hence to sing, to chant, as accompanying an instrument. With dative of person to or in honor of whom, that is, to celebrate. Sometimes with Be of instrument.

Note that, after he gives "Greek psallein" as its equivalent, he adds: "and hence to sing, to chant," showing clearly the conception which this eminent Hebraist had of the meaning which psallo was then coming to have.

3. The recent Hebrew and English Lexicon of Brown, Driver, and Briggs--a work exhibiting painstaking and extended research--says:

Make music in praise of God--make music, melody;--1. of singing to God. 2. of playing musical instruments.

Of the noun, zimrah, the same authority says:

Melody, song, in praise of--1. of instrumental music. 2. of singing.

4. Parkhurst's Hebrew and English Lexicon says:

To sing, or utter harmoniously, as a psalm or the like, pruned,^[9] as it were, from all irregular and discordant sounds.

5. Bagster's Hebrew-English Lexicon says:

Cut, prune, Piel, he sang, with Be; celebrated the praises of, with Le.^[10]

In recognition of the prevailing meaning thus vouched for by the lexicons, the Revised Version, as also to some extent the King James Version, renders zamar simply to "sing praises." The following passages may be consulted in illustration: Jud. 5: 3; 2 Sam. 22: 50; Psa. 7: 17; 9: 2; 27: 6; 30: 4; 47: 6; 59: 17; 61: 8; 75: 9; 101: 1. In these, and many other passages, the expressions, "sing praise" and "sing praises," both represent zamar in the original.

We are now warranted in certain conclusions concerning the Septuagint:

1. The use of psallo in that version to represent different Hebrew words varying in meaning from that of playing on a musical instrument to singing with instrumental accompaniment, and then to singing without any instrument at all except the organs of speech, is in harmony with, and partly confirmatory of, the position that the word was then in process of change. It should be remembered, as before observed, that the Septuagint was made two hundred years before Christ and psallo had not yet altogether changed from its classical meaning, though it was even then rapidly taking on the meaning simply "to sing."

2. The fact that it was then in process of change, and that at the opening of the New Testament period two hundred years later this change had been completely effected so that it had come to mean simply to sing, is a complete exposure of the fallacy of resorting to the Septuagint for support for any other meaning in the New Testament. As observed in another chapter, this course with psallo is precisely on a par with the course of those who might assert that "silly" means to be "fortunate" or "happy," and then resort to Chaucer to prove it!