Psalms 149:3: “Let them praise His name in the dance,  let them sing praises unto Him with the timbre and the harp.

Do you ever go through a period of time when you feel like old Job.  Just one messenger after another keeps coming to your door with some more bad news.  There is a line in Shakespeare Hamlet: Act 4, Scene 5 where Claudius receives a string of bad news and cries out: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

There is the story in Jewish literature of a famous rabbi who encouraged his students to praise God  even for a bad day.  One student asked: “Master , if God only gives good things, then He will surely not give us a bad day.  How then should we praise Him for something He did not give to use?“  The rabbi scratched his head and admitted that he had no answer to that question.  But he said a man in the next village by the name of Ben Yohanan could answer his question.”  The next day the students journeyed to the village to seek out Ben Yohanan.  They found him in the poorest section of town, living in a one room shack that had only a cot to sleep on, a table, a chair and a stool.  He was too ill to work and lived on a very small pension that barely kept him alive. The students learned from the other villagers that he spent practically all his waking hours studying Torah.   When they knocked on his door, he joyfully  invited them in apologizing for not getting up as he had injured his leg the prior day.   He also apologized that he had nothing more to offer them but bread and water, but the students assured him they were not hungry.  When Ben Yohanan asked why such bright young men would honor him with a visit one explained that their rabbi sent them to him to answer a question that he could not answer.  Ben Yohanan asked the rabbi’s name and when he heard it he exclaimed: “Why that is one of the most learned  rabbis in the region, how is that I can answer a question he could not?   But go ahead and ask.”   They then asked him: “If God only gives good things and we are to praise him for all things, how can we praise him for a bad day?”    With that Ben Yohanan broke out laughing and said; “Your rabbi has certainly made a mistake by sending you to me to answer that question.  I could not possibly know the answer to that question.  For you see, I never had a bad day.”

Indeed, how can we have a bad day when each day we have here on earth is another opportunity to sing and dance and praise the Lord.  Each day is a new opportunity to study His Word and learn something new.

Literally, Psalms 149: 3 reads: They shall praise His name in from the dance.  The word dance is bemacheval.  In comes from a Semitic root cheval which means to spin around in a circle or to twirl.  People pay a small fortune at Six Flags to get spun around in a circle. Yesterday I watch a small child run from her mother and then she just stopped and began to spin around in a circle out of pure joy.  There is something pleasurable in spinning around in a circle.  The word in Hebrew cheval is spelled Chet, Vav and Lamed.  This would indicate that this is a dance that connects you to the infinite nature of God.  One rabbi pointed out that the Chet equals eight and when put on its side it is the symbol of the infinite.   More telling is that he word cheval, to spin around in a circle, has a numerical value of 26 which is the same numerical value of the name of God YHWH.  The word praise.  is hallal which is where we get the word Hallelujah. The word Hallel does mean to praise, but in its Semitic root it means to act madly or foolishly.  Seriously,  this comes straight from the likes of Fohere’s Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary.  Esoterically the double Lamed in Hallel indicates a movement toward the heart of God. It also indicates two up lifted hands

The idea here is not so much the act of spinning around  physically as it is spinning and weaving yourself  around God by praising (hallal) His name in the form of a dance  or cheval which is meant to  bind yourself with God.  The more you spin the tighter the binding gets. In fact in ancient times children used to spin around in circle when they worshipped God.  David cheval or spun around in a circle before the ark of the covenant such that his wife rebuked him for acting foolishly or hallal which was not a dignified way to act as a king.

The next phrase in this verse:  Let them sing praises unto him with the timbre and the harp is to be taken literally “In a tambourine and a harp they shall make melody.”   I can’t think of two instruments that are more incompatible than a tambourine and a harp.  But they were commonly played together at banquets and  festive occasions.   The timbre and tambourine were symbolic of victory.

The Talmud teaches that the Levitical harp players in the first and second temple were to sing a melody that no one else was permitted to learn.  The melodies were passed down from father to son until the end of the second temple.  Since that time these melodies have been hidden.  The Hebrew word for harp is  kinor spelled Kap, Nun and Resh.  These letters and their order represent filling your heart with faith and the Holy Spirit.  The word for praise here is zamar which literally means to cut or divide. It is in a Piel form which gives it the idea of dividing into rhythmical numbers or the formation of melodies.   The idea of the harp and praise or melody zamar is to  make music that comes from your heart that is filled with faith and the Holy Spirit. This would be new melodies, hidden melodies.

The primary idea behind Psalms 149:3 is more than singing and dancing to the tune of the harp and tambourine.  It is spinning and weaving or binding yourself to God so that the melodies you sing come from a heart filled with faith and the Holy Spirit.

I recall many years ago listening to Richard Wurmbrand who spent many years in a communist prison for his faith.  He said that other such prisoners who were put into solitary confinement would just spin around in circle out of pure joy just praising God.  Their sorrows also came in battalions, yet they learned the Biblical secret to finding joy in the midst of trouble, they became just like a little child without a care in the world and began to spin around in circle praising God.  Some days it seems you have nothing left, the enemy has come in an taken it all from you.  Many times as sorrows come to my door one after another I find I lay in bed tossing and turning wondering why God does not at least give me one little blessing, why He allows all these things to come upon me. Others who seem to be less devoted to God give these wonderful testimonies of God giving them new houses and cars while I struggle to pay a tax bill or even renew my subscription to an Archaeological journal. My faith is so shaken, I really begin to question whether God is a God of love, a God who cares or even if there is a God at all.  Then I just get out of bed and go to the center of my apartment and I begin to spin around in a circle, a sixty four year old man spinning around like a little child.  I beginning praising God and before long I am just spinning around praising God out of pure joy wearing myself out so that I just collapse into a sound sleep.